Europlanet Science Congress 2020
Virtual meeting
21 September – 9 October 2020
Europlanet Science Congress 2020
Virtual meeting
21 September – 9 October 2020
EPSC Abstracts
Vol.14, EPSC2020-819, 2020
https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc2020-819
Europlanet Science Congress 2020
© Author(s) 2020. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

The influence of crustal magnetic fields on the Martian bow shock : a statistical analysis of Mars Volatile EvolutioN and Mars Express observations

Philippe Garnier1, Christian Jacquey1, Christian Mazelle1, Xiaohua Fang2, Jacob Gruesbeck3,4, Benjamin Hall5, Kei Masunaga6, Jasper Halekas7, Jared Espley4, Bruce Jakosky2, Vincent Genot1, and Emmanuel Penou1
Philippe Garnier et al.
  • 1IRAP, Universite Toulouse 3, IRAP, Toulouse, France (philippe.garnier@irap.omp.eu)
  • 2Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics University of Colorado, Boulder, US
  • 3Department of Astronomy, University of Maryland, College Park, MD, US
  • 4NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, US
  • 5Space and Planetary Physics Group, Department of Physics, Lancaster University, Lancaster, UK
  • 6Swedish Institute of Space Physics, Kiruna, Sweden
  • 7Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Iowa, Iowa City, Iowa, USA

The Martian interaction with the solar wind is unique due to the influence of remanent crustal magnetic fields. The recent studies by the Mars Express and Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution missions underline the strong and complex influence of the crustal magnetic fields on the Martian environment and its interaction with the solar wind. Among them is the influence on the dynamic plasma boundaries that shape this interaction and on the bow shock in particular.

Compared to other drivers of the shock location (e.g. solar dynamic pressure, extreme ultraviolet fluxes), the influence of crustal magnetic fields are less understood, with essentially differences observed between the southern and northern hemispheres attributed to the crustal fields. In this presentation we analyze in detail the influence of the crustal fields on the Martian shock location by combining for the first time datasets from two different spacecraft (MAVEN/MEX). An application of machine learning techniques will also be used to increase the list of MAVEN shocks published to date. We show in particular the importance for analyzing biases due to multiple parameters of influence through a partial correlation approach. We also compare the impact of crustal fields with the other parameters of influence, and show that the main drivers of the shock location are by order of importance extreme ultraviolet fluxes and magnetosonic Mach number, crustal fields and then solar wind dynamic pressure.

How to cite: Garnier, P., Jacquey, C., Mazelle, C., Fang, X., Gruesbeck, J., Hall, B., Masunaga, K., Halekas, J., Espley, J., Jakosky, B., Genot, V., and Penou, E.: The influence of crustal magnetic fields on the Martian bow shock : a statistical analysis of Mars Volatile EvolutioN and Mars Express observations, Europlanet Science Congress 2020, online, 21 September–9 Oct 2020, EPSC2020-819, https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc2020-819, 2020