Articles tagged with Exosphere
SwRI's Strofio, a neutral mass spectrometer, will sample Mercury's sparse exosphere to measure surface particles. This will provide a global understanding of Mercury's surface composition and space environment, answering scientific questions about its origin story.
Researchers at TU Wien found that the solar wind ions' erosive effect on the Moon has been vastly overestimated. The actual yield is up to an order of magnitude lower than previously assumed due to the regolith's porous structure.
The GLIDE spacecraft will reveal the structure and dynamic behavior of the Earth's outermost atmospheric layer, known as the exosphere. The mission will make unprecedented measurements of far ultraviolet light emitted by hydrogen atoms in the exosphere.
Researchers from TU Wien discovered that solar wind particles can cause drastic effects on rock surfaces, leading to an 'exosphere' of shattered atoms. The findings are crucial for the ESA mission BepiColombo, which aims to study Mercury's composition using this exosphere.
The LADEE spacecraft has confirmed the presence of neon in the lunar atmosphere for the first time, finding it to be relatively abundant. The moon's thin atmosphere is composed mostly of helium and argon, with neon levels varying by time of day.
MESSENGER's third flyby of Mercury reveals evidence of younger volcanism, with the youngest basins yet seen, and new information about magnetic substorms. The spacecraft also observed emission from an ionized species in Mercury's thin atmosphere for the first time.