Today, NASA reported about its efforts to understand “two unexpected phenomena in the Martian atmosphere: an unexplained high-altitude dust cloud and aurora that reaches deep into the Martian atmosphere.” No known process on Mars can explain the appearance of dust in the observed locations from normally expected sources. Further concerning the mysterious aurora, MAVEN detected “a huge surge in energetic electrons at the onset of the aurora” that must be solar particles suddenly increasing, but why?
Both mysteries were detected by NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution, MAVEN, spacecraft that has been orbiting the red planet since September 22, 2014.
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