[Baps] Mars talk at BU on Thursday

[Paul Withers]

Modeling the solar wind interaction with the Mars space environment
Jackie Schoendorf, SPARTA, Inc., Nashua, NH

4pm, CAS 502, 725 Commonwealth Avenue, 26 October
Cookies at 3.30pm
http://www.bu.edu/dbin/csp/?q=CSP_sem

Mars, possessing an extensive upper atmosphere and strong localized crustal
magnetic fields but no global magnetic field, presents an interesting
obstacle to the solar wind.  Like the solar wind interaction with Earth, the
Martian solar wind interaction is variable on many time scales and in
response to many external inputs such as solar wind pressure, IMF
orientation, solar EUV flux, and season.  Understanding the Martian solar
wind interaction is also of interest because it is believed that Mars has
lost a significant portion of its atmosphere over the last 4 billion years.
No single mechanism is identified as the cause, however the solar wind
interaction with Mars is considered a prime contributor. The current state
of global models of the Martian solar wind interaction will be discussed.
These models are maturing to include atmospheric composition and chemistry
as well as the crustal magnetic fields so that they can be used to
investigate climate evolution and other aspects of  this mechanism such as
atmospheric escape, magnetic topology, and ionospheric loss rates.