A study of suprathermal oxygen atoms in Mars upper thermosphere and exosphere over the range of limiting conditions
✍ Scribed by Arnaud Valeille; Michael R. Combi; Valeriy Tenishev; Stephen W. Bougher; Andrew F. Nagy
- Publisher
- Elsevier Science
- Year
- 2010
- Tongue
- English
- Weight
- 617 KB
- Volume
- 206
- Category
- Article
- ISSN
- 0019-1035
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✦ Synopsis
As a part of a global effort, the dynamics of energetic particles flowing through the martian upper atmosphere is studied. Most of the production of hot atomic oxygen occurs deep in the day-side thermosphere of Mars, where dissociative recombination (DR) of O þ 2 ion is the dominant source. The study of an upper atmosphere is complicated by the change in the flow regime from a thermospheric collisional to an exospheric collisionless domain. To understand the martian exosphere, it is then highly desirable to employ a global kinetic model that includes a self-consistent description of both thermospheric and exospheric regions. In this work, a combination of our Direct Simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) model [Tenishev, V.,