The Emirates Mars Mission, the first interplanetary exploration undertaken by an Arab nation, has made the first observations of a new type of proton aurora around Mars. The spatially variable ‘patchy’ proton aurora potentially triggers new insights into unexpected behaviors in the Martian atmosphere. The EMM team has worked together with NASA’s MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile Evolution) mission to fully characterize these observations. The combination of EMM’s unprecedented global aurora images with MAVEN’s simultaneous local plasma observations opens up new avenues for understanding the drivers of Mars’ enigmatic aurora.
