NASA’s MAVEN detects impacts of Comet on Mars’ Magnetic Field

NASA launched Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution spacecraft (MAVEN) to know more about what happened to early atmosphere on planet Mars.

After a week into Mars orbit, the Colorado-built spacecraft found that Mars’ magnetic field was thrown into chaos by Siding Spring's magnetosphere that made a close flyby Mars.

As a precaution, many instruments on MAVEN were turned off during Siding Spring’s flyby. This is a distance similar to one-third of the distance from the Earth to the moon. Many of instruments of MAVEN were shut down in order to protect them from pressure of the comet; however, a few were set operational to observe effects of the comet.

Scientists had made several observations through MAVEN. The spacecraft has observed solar winds that were generated by bursts of gas and magnetic energy from the sun. The impact of comet was compared with large solar storm. The bursts striped out atmospheric gases of Mars into space. This comet flyby has given another clue to researchers to understand the reason behind disappearance of atmosphere on Mars.

“We saw a significant impact at Mars. It completely disrupted the Mars magnetosphere. This was something that had never happened before. This isn't something we set out to study, but we took advantage of this natural experiment”, said Bruce Jakosky, MAVEN's principal investigator from the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics.

According to Jakosky, the magnetic field on Mars took around a day to be normal again. Had a similar incident occurred on earth, the result would have been different. Unlike earth, a magnetic field on Mars is generated from its core. The red planet has a weak magnetic field created in its upper atmosphere.