First BepiColombo flyby of Mercury finds electron rain triggers X-ray auroras
Tuesday, 18 July 2023 15:09
BepiColombo, the joint European Space Agency (ESA) and Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) mission, has revealed how electrons raining down onto the surface of Mercury can trigger high-energy auroras.
The mission, which has been enroute to the solar system's innermost planet since 2018, successfully carried out its first Mercury flyby on October 1, 2021. An international team of researchers analyzed data from three of BepiColombo's instruments during the encounter. The outcomes of this study have been published in Nature Communications.
Terrestrial auroras are generated by interactions between the solar wind, a stream of charged particles emitted by the sun, and an electrically charged upper layer of Earth's atmosphere, called the ionosphere.
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