Bow shock oscillations of Mars under weakly disturbed solar wind conditions.

ABSTRACT: Bow shock, where the solar wind first encounters the Martian environment, reflects the complex interplay between the solar wind and Martian upper atmosphere and crustal fields. However, a comprehensive understanding of Martian bow shock dynamics remains elusive due to limited multi-spacecraft observations. Here, leveraging the joint observations from China's Tianwen-1 and NASA's Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN), we reveal Martian bow shock oscillations with a temporal scale of minutes and spatial extents of hundreds of kilometers during weakly disturbed solar wind. Our analysis of the observations along with three-dimensional simulations suggests that magnetosonic Mach number is the most sensitive parameter influencing the bow shock, and a slow solar wind stream that favors l

SUBMITTER: Cheng L 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC12578890 | biostudies-literature | 2025 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature