Solar wind washes over the planets, but it briefly disappeared at Mars due to an event on the sun.
Normally in our solar system, the sun is constantly spewing out a stream of charged particles and magnetic fields, called the solar wind.
In December 2022, though, the solar wind suddenly disappeared around Mars, and the planet's atmosphere swelled by thousands of kilometers, as a result.
An eruption on the sun swept away the solar windScientists determined that the sun had emitted a burst of high-speed solar wind, which swept away a region of the regular solar wind, leaving a void in its wake.
To figure out if that's what happened, it helps to study the opposite extreme, when the solar wind vanishes.
Persons:
Mars, Shannon Curry, MAVEN, Lacey Young, Curry, Owen Humphreys, NASA's MAVEN
Organizations:
MAVEN, Service, NASA, JPL, American Geophysical Union, Lacey Young NASA, Science, Space Station
Locations:
Mars, San Francisco