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Geological Record of Water and Wind Processes on Mars as Observed by the Mars Express High Resolution Stereo Camera
Jaumann, R.; Tirsch, D.; Hiesinger, H. +9 more
This review paper summarizes the observations and results of the Mars Express Mission and its application in the analysis of geological processes and landforms on Mars during the last 20 years. The Mars Express observations provided an extended data base allowing a comparative evaluation of different geological surface landforms and their time-bas…
The Polar Stratosphere of Jupiter
Zhang, X.; Johnson, R. E.; Hueso, R. +13 more
Observations of the Jovian upper atmosphere at high latitudes in the UV, IR and mm/sub-mm all indicate that the chemical distributions and thermal structure are broadly influenced by auroral particle precipitations. Mid-IR and UV observations have shown that several light hydrocarbons (up to 6 carbon atoms) have altered abundances near Jupiter's m…
Water Ice and Possible Habitability in the Landing Area of Tianwen-1 Mission
Ding, Chunyu; Su, Yan; Li, Jiawei +3 more
The Tianwen-1 mission, marking China's inaugural venture into Mars exploration, successfully deployed the Zhurong rover on Utopia Planitia. This review primarily focuses on the insights provided by the Mars Rover Penetrating Radar (RoPeR), a pivotal component of the mission's scientific payload. The article synthesizes the RoPeR findings with an e…
Dust and Clouds on Mars: The View from Mars Express
Montmessin, F.; Fedorova, A.; Sánchez-Lavega, A. +11 more
European Space Agency's Mars Express (MEX) has been orbiting Mars for 20 years and its instruments have provided a plethora of observations of atmospheric dust and clouds. These observations have been analysed to produce many unique views of the processes leading to dust lifting and cloud formation, and a full picture of the climatologies of dust …
Composition and Mineralogy of Nuclei Material of Short Period Comets Revealed by Recent Spacecraft Missions
Engrand, Cecile; Nakamura, Tomoki; Zolensky, Michael +1 more
We summarize mineralogical and compositional results from lab and in-situ spacecraft investigations of samples of comets 81P/Wild 2 and 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko which provide constraints to early solar system evolution. Wild 2 cometary solids were mineralogically similar to anhydrous chondritic Interplanetary Dust Particles with the exception tha…
Heavy Molecular and Metallic Ions in the Magnetosphere
Yamauchi, M.; Wurz, P.; Dandouras, I. +11 more
Observations and present knowledge of heavy ions with mass ≥ 27 in the magnetosphere are reviewed. There are four ultimate sources of these heavy ions: the solar wind (mainly high charge-state atomic ions), the ionosphere (mainly molecular ions), the atmospheric metal layers that originate ultimately from ablation of meteoroids and possibly space …
Mars' Water Cycle and Escape: A View from Mars Express and Beyond
Aoki, S.; Villanueva, G. L.; Liuzzi, G. +12 more
The search for water on Mars has long been a theme of intense exploration, as it represents a means of addressing Mars' current climate as well as its evolution in the recent and more distant past. Since the 1970s, several missions have carried instruments to track water in the atmosphere, leading to the conceptualization of a water cycle on Mars …
Composition and Chemistry of the Martian Atmosphere as Observed by Mars Express and ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter
Montmessin, Franck; Korablev, Oleg; Fedorova, Anna +13 more
The atmosphere of Mars has been studied for many years now by a long series of missions. The paper focuses on the results obtained by two of these that are led by European researchers overseen by the European Space Agency, i.e., Mars Express which was launched in 2003 and ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter launched in 2016. Both missions are still providin…