What happens when a solar superstorm hits Mars? 🔴
In May 2024, the biggest solar storm in over 20 years slammed into Earth… and Mars.
Our Mars Express and ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter were watching in real time. In just 64 hours, radiation levels spiked to the equivalent of 200 normal days, and Mars’s upper atmosphere was flooded with electrons like never before.
Even spacecraft computers glitched.
Space weather doesn’t just light up skies. It can reshape atmospheres and disrupt missions across the Solar System.
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@europeanspaceagency
🎞️ SOHO (ESA &
@NASA), NASA/SDO/AIA, JHelioviewer/D. Müller, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO; ESA/Mars Express/VMC, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO; SOHO (ESA & NASA); ESA/NASA -
@thom_astro; ESA; EUHFORIA/J. Pomoell, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO; ESA; ESA /
@germanaerospacecenter /
@fu_berlin, CC BY-SA 3.0 IGO
📸 ESA