Oxygen foreshock of Mars

Abstract

Mars Express (MEX) has operated for more than 10 years in the environment of Mars, providing solar wind ion observations from the Analyzer of Space Plasmas and Energetic Atoms experiment's Ion Mass Analyser (IMA). On 21 September 2008, MEX/IMA detected foreshock-like discrete distributions of oxygen ions at around 1keV in the solar wind attached to the bow shock and this distribution was observed continuously up to more than 2000km from the bow shock. Foreshock-like protons are also observed but at a shifted location from the oxygen by about 1000km, at a slightly higher energy, and flowing in a slightly different direction than the oxygen ions. Both protons and oxygen ions are flowing anti-sunward at different angles with respect to the solar wind direction. This is the first time that a substantial amount of planetary oxygen is observed upstream of the bow shock. Although rare, this is not the only IMA observation of foreshock-like oxygen: oxygen ions are sometimes observed for a short period of time (<5min) inside the foreshock region. These observations suggest a new escape channel for planetary ions through the acceleration in the bow shock–magnetosheath region.