{"id":216581,"date":"2025-06-25T06:11:45","date_gmt":"2025-06-25T11:11:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/orbiter-pair-expands-view-of-martian-ionosphere"},"modified":"2025-06-25T06:11:45","modified_gmt":"2025-06-25T11:11:45","slug":"orbiter-pair-expands-view-of-martian-ionosphere","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/2025\/06\/orbiter-pair-expands-view-of-martian-ionosphere","title":{"rendered":"Orbiter pair expands view of Martian ionosphere"},"content":{"rendered":"

<\/a><\/p>\n

Like Earth, Mars is surrounded by an ionosphere\u2014the part of its upper atmosphere where radiation from the sun knocks electrons off of atoms and molecules, creating charged particles. The Martian ionosphere is complex and continuously changes over the course of the day, but its role in atmospheric dynamics and radio communication signals means understanding it is key for Mars exploration.<\/p>\n

One way to study the Martian ionosphere<\/a> is with radio occultation, in which a spacecraft orbiting Mars sends a radio signal<\/a> to a receiver on Earth. When it skims across the Martian ionosphere, the signal bends slightly. Researchers can measure this refraction to learn about Martian ionospheric properties such as electron density and temperature. However, the relative positions of Mars, Earth, and the sun mean conventional radio occultation cannot measure the middle of the Martian day.<\/p>\n

Now, in an article published<\/a> in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets<\/i>, Jacob Parrot and colleagues deepen our understanding of the Martian ionosphere using an approach called mutual radio occultation, in which the radio signal is sent not from an orbiter to Earth but between two Mars orbiters. As one orbiter rises or sets behind Mars from the other\u2019s perspective, the signal passes through the ionosphere and refracts according to the ionosphere\u2019s properties.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Like Earth, Mars is surrounded by an ionosphere\u2014the part of its upper atmosphere where radiation from the sun knocks electrons off of atoms and molecules, creating charged particles. The Martian ionosphere is complex and continuously changes over the course of the day, but its role in atmospheric dynamics and radio communication signals means understanding it [\u2026]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":396,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[48,8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-216581","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-particle-physics","category-space"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216581","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/396"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=216581"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/216581\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=216581"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=216581"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lifeboat.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=216581"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}