EPP

Whistler-mode chorus waves are regarded as an important acceleration mechanism contributing to the formation of relativistic and ultra-relativistic electrons in the Jovian radiation belts. Quantitative determination of the chorus wave driven electron scattering effect in the Jovian magnetosphere requires detailed information of both ambient magnetic field and plasma density and wave spectral property, which however cannot be always readily acquired from observations of existed missions to Jupiter. We therefore perform a comprehensive analysis of the sensitivity of chorus induced electron scattering rates to ambient magnetospheric and wave parameters in the Jovian radiation belts to elaborate to which extent the diffusion coefficients depend on a number of key input parameters. It is found that quasi-linear electron scattering rates by chorus can be strongly affected by the ambient magnetic field intensity, the wave latitudinal coverage, and the peak frequency and bandwidth of the wave spectral distribution in the Jovian magnetosphere, while they only rely slightly on the background plasma density profile and the peak wave normal angle, especially when the wave emissions are confined at lower latitudes. Given the chorus wave amplitude, chorus induced electron scattering rates strongly depend on Jovian L-shell to exhibit a tendency approximately proportional to L_J³. Our comprehensive analysis explicitly demonstrates the importance of reliable information of both the ambient magnetospheric state and wave distribution property to understanding the dynamic electron evolution in the Jovian radiation belts and therefore has implications for future mission planning to explore the extreme particle radiation environment of Jupiter and its satellites.

The Venusian dayside ionosphere, similar to other planetary ionospheres, is produced primarily by ionization of its neutral upper atmosphere due to solar extreme ultraviolet (EUV) radiation. It has become clear that the expansion of the ionosphere may be strongly controlled by the EUV level, as exhibited in data collected by the Pioneer Venus Orbiter (PVO) during one solar cycle (1978–1992). However, the EUV-dependence of the Venusian dayside ionopause altitude, which defines the outer boundary of the ionosphere, remains obscure because the PVO crossed the dayside ionopause only during the solar maximum; its periapsis lifted too high during the solar minimum. Recently, during the period 2006–2014, which included the longest and quietest solar minimum of the past several decades, Venus Express (VEX) provided measurements of the photoelectron boundary (PEB) over the northern high-latitude region. Since the photoelectron boundary is closely related to the ionopause, we have an opportunity to analyze the EUV effect on the dayside ionopause by combining PVO and VEX observations. We have evaluated and then reduced the orbit bias effect in data from both PVO and VEX, and then used the results to derive a relationship between solar EUV level and the dayside ionopause altitude. We find that the dayside ionopause altitude increases as the solar EUV level increases, which is consistent with theoretical expectations.

Proton cyclotron waves (PCWs) can be generated by ion pickup of Martian exospheric particles in the solar wind. The solar wind ion pickup process is highly dependent on the “IMF cone angle” — the angle between the solar wind velocity and the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF), which also plays an important role in the generation of PCWs. Using data from 2.15 Martian years of magnetic field measurements collected by the Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution (MAVEN) mission, we have identified 3307 upstream PCW events. Their event number distribution decreases exponentially with their duration. A statistical investigation of the effects of IMF cone angle on the amplitudes and occurrence rates of PCWs reveals a slight tendency of PCWs’ amplitudes to decrease with increasing IMF cone angle. The relationship between the amplitude and IMF cone angle is weak, with a correlation coefficient r = –0.3. We also investigated the influence of IMF cone angle on the occurrence rate of PCWs and found that their occurrence rate is particularly high for intermediate IMF cone angles (~18°–42°) even though highly oblique IMF orientation occurs most frequently in the upstream region of the Martian bow shock. We also conclude that these variabilities are not artefacts of temporal coverage biases in MAVEN sampling. Our results demonstrate that whereas IMF cone angle strongly influences the occurrence of PCWs, IMF cone angle may also weakly modulate their amplitudes in the upstream region of Mars.

The planet Earth is an integrated system, in which its multi-spheres are coupled, from the space to the inner core. Whether the space environment in short to long terms has been controlled by the earth’s interior process is contentious. In the past several decades, space weather and space climate have been extensively studied based on either observation data measured directly by man-made instruments or ancient data inferred indirectly from some historical medium of past thousands of years. The acquired knowledge greatly helps us to understand the dynamic processes in the space environment of modern Earth, which has a strong magnetic dipole and an oxygen-rich atmosphere. However, no data is available for ancient space weather and climate (>5 ka). Here, we propose to take the advantage of " space-diversity” to build a " generalized planetary space family”, to reconcile the ancient space environment evolution of planet Earth from modern observations of other planets in our solar system. Such a method could also in turn give us a valuable insight into other planets’ evolution.

Electron density is a key parameter to characterize Martian ionospheric structure and dynamics. Based on the ephemeris and auxiliary information derived from the Spacecraft, Planet, Instruments, C-matrix, and Events (SPICE) toolkit, we calculated the bending angle of signal path from the frequency residuals measured by the Mars Express Radio Science Experiment (MaRS) of the Mars Express (MEX) mission under the assumption of a spherically symmetric ionosphere. We stratified the ionosphere into layers and assumed a linear change of bending angle between layers, to derive profiles in radial distance of refractivity with the optimized parameters of upper integral limit of 4890 km and baseline correction boundary of 3690 km. Meanwhile, we also compared the retrieved electron density profiles between the frequency residuals of the single-frequency and differential Doppler of the dual-frequency. In total, ~640 electron density profiles of Martian ionosphere between April 2004 and April 2015 were retrieved successfully. There are 24 profiles identified manually that exhibit an additional sporadic layer occurrence below the normal two-layers. We also found that the peak altitude of this layer increases with the main peak altitude.

Cassini observations over the past ten years have revealed that Titan possesses a chemically complex ionosphere. In this study, we investigate the relative contributions of different ion species to the total ion escape on Titan, by dividing all ion species probed by the Cassini Ion Neutral Mass Spectrometer (INMS) into six groups according to their mass-to-charge ratios (M/Z). For the three lightest ion groups, with characteristic M/Z of 22, 41, and 52 daltons , the observed scale heights tend to be lower than the scale heights predicted by assuming diffusive equilibrium; for the three heavier groups, observed and predicted scale heights are in general agreement, implying that most ion escape from Titan is by relatively light species, with M/Z < 60 daltons. A diffusion model is constructed to describe the density distribution of each ion group in regions where the effect of ionospheric chemistry could be neglected. The data model comparison predicts an optimal total ion escape rate of 3.1×10²⁴ s^–1, of which more than 99% is contributed by relatively light ions with M/Z < 32 daltons.

The interior structures of planets are attracting more and more detailed attention; these studies could be of great value in improving our understanding of the early evolution of Earth. Seismological investigations of planet interiors rely primarily on seismic waves excited by seismic events. Since tectonic activities are much weaker on other planets, e.g. Mars, the magnitudes of their seismic events are much smaller than those on Earth. It is therefore a challenge to detect seismic events on planets using such conventional techniques as short-time average/long-time average (STA/LTA) triggers. In pursuit of an effective and robust scheme to detect small-magnitude events on Mars in the near future, we have taken Apollo lunar seismic observations as an example of weak-activity data and developed an event-detection scheme. The scheme reported here is actually a two-step processing approach: the first step involves a despike filter to remove large-amplitude impulses arising from large temperature variations; the second step employs a matched filter to unmask the seismic signals from a weak event hidden in the ambient and scattering noise. The proposed scheme has been used successfully to detect a moonquake that was not in the known moonquake catalogue, demonstrating that the two-step strategy is a feasible method for detecting seismic events on planets. Our scheme will provide a powerful tool for seismic data analysis of the Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight) mission, and China’s future lunar missions.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences and its affiliated institutes and universities, responding to ever-increasing needs of China’s space explorations and exploitations in recent years, have taken a series of initiatives and conducted related activities to support Chinese planetary science research.

The present issue of Earth and Planetary Physics is dedicated to the near-space neutral and plasma environments of Mars. The issue includes nine papers that present new results on the properties of the Martian exosphere, ionosphere, and magnetosphere, from both observational and modeling points of view. Due to the similarity between the two objects, the issue also includes two additional papers on the near-Venus plasma environment.