Europlanet Science Congress 2021
Virtual meeting
13 – 24 September 2021
Europlanet Science Congress 2021
Virtual meeting
13 September – 24 September 2021
EPSC Abstracts
Vol. 15, EPSC2021-410, 2021
https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc2021-410
European Planetary Science Congress 2021
© Author(s) 2021. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Magnetic Fields, Atmospheres, and the Connection to Habitability (MACH) – Using Team Science to determine how magnetic fields influence habitability

Dave Brain1, William Peterson1, Ofer Cohen2, Tom Cravens3, Kevin France1, Yoshifumi Futaana4, Alex Glocer5, Mats Holmström4, Lynn Kistler6, Yingjuan Ma7, Laura Peticolas8, Robin Ramstad1, Kanako Seki9, Robert Strangeway7, and Aline Vidotto10
Dave Brain et al.
  • 1University of Colorado, LASP, Astrophysics and Planetary Sciences, Boulder, United States of America (david.brain@lasp.colorado.edu)
  • 2UMass Lowell
  • 3University of Kansas
  • 4IRF Kiruna
  • 5NASA GSFC
  • 6University of New Hampshire
  • 7UCLA
  • 8Sonoma State University
  • 9University of Tokyo
  • 10Trinity University

In order to determine the extent to which a global magnetic field is required for a planet to be habitable at its surface, expertise is required from diverse communities, some of which have diverged from each other over the past several decades. For example, modelers and observers of the terrestrial magnetosphere have limited overlap and interaction with modelers and observers of unmagnetized planets or the giant planets in our solar system. There is relatively limited interaction between any of the above communities and those who study exoplanets, though efforts are increasing to bridge the solar system and exoplanet communities.

 

We describe a NASA Heliophysics DRIVE Science Center selected to answer the central question of this session: “Do Habitable Worlds Require Magnetic Fields”. This Center, named MACH (Magnetic Fields, Atmospheres, and the Connection to Habitability) includes scientists who study atmospheric escape from Earth, unmagnetized planets, and exoplanets. Over the next several years MACH will construct a framework that enables the evaluation of atmospheric loss from an arbitrary rocky planet, given information about the planet and its host star. The MACH Center hosted a community-wide workshop in June 2021 centered around this topic, and is seeking to grow their interactions with interested scientists from relevant disciplines.

How to cite: Brain, D., Peterson, W., Cohen, O., Cravens, T., France, K., Futaana, Y., Glocer, A., Holmström, M., Kistler, L., Ma, Y., Peticolas, L., Ramstad, R., Seki, K., Strangeway, R., and Vidotto, A.: Magnetic Fields, Atmospheres, and the Connection to Habitability (MACH) – Using Team Science to determine how magnetic fields influence habitability, European Planetary Science Congress 2021, online, 13–24 Sep 2021, EPSC2021-410, https://doi.org/10.5194/epsc2021-410, 2021.