First felt solar flare on Earth, Moon and Mars simultaneously. The peak of incoming radiation from the Sun was discovered thanks to data from multiple space missions, including the European Space Agency’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter in orbit around Mars. This was discovered by the research team led by Bin Zhuang of the American University of New Hampshire, who published the data in the journal Geophysical Research Letters.
In recent years the Sun has been in a particularly active phase and violent flares or eruptions are quite frequent which release large quantities of particles and radiations which can hit the various planets. One of these occurred on October 28, 2021, a so-called class X1.0 flare (the most intense type), which hit the Earth without however producing damage because our planet is protected by a magnetic field capable of shielding the surface and redirect many charged particles towards the poles (leading to the formation of auroras). But for the first time, as also stated in the informative video just released by ESA, traces of this same eruption have also been recorded simultaneously on Mars and on the Moon.
The explosion was detected by instruments aboard several spacecraft including the European ExoMars TGO probe, NASA’s Mars rover Curiosity, the Chinese space agency CNSA’s Chang’e-4 lunar lander, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter of NASA and the EuCropis mission of the German agency Dlr. A ‘first time’ which will certainly be repeated over time because solar flares are a rather common phenomenon and which underlines the importance of adequate levels of protection for space missions, especially in view of future inhabited lunar colonies or long journeys with astronauts towards Mars.
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Source: Ansa
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