March 22, 2010, 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

March 22, 2010, 12:00 pm - 1:00 pm

A 3D Multi-fluid MHD Study of the Interaction of the Solar Wind with the Ionosphere/Atmosphere System of Mars.

Dalal Najib (Department of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences, University of Michigan)

We use our new four species multi-fluid model to study the interaction of the solar wind with Mars. The lower boundary of our model is at 100 km, below the main ionospheric peak, and the radial resolution is about 10 km in the ionosphere, thus the model does a very good job in reproducing the ionosphere and the associated processes. We carry out calculations for high and low solar activity conditions and establish the importance of mass loading by the extended exosphere of Mars. We also calculate the atmospheric escape of the ionospheric species. We study the effects of including Mars crustal field on the values of the escape fluxes and on the bow shock position. We compare our results to the ones obtained by our previous single fluid multi-species model.