Retrieval of ionospheric profiles from the Mars Express MARSIS experiment data and comparison with radio occultation data

摘要

Since 2005 the Mars Advanced Radar and Ionospheric Sounding experiment(MARSIS) aboard Mars Express has acquired a unique dataset on theionosphere of Mars made up of ionospheric soundings taken by the instrumentworking in its active ionospheric sounding (AIS) mode. These soundings playa role similar to those of modern Terrestrial digisondes in the analysis ofour planet ionosphere and have allowed us to dramatically improve ourknowledge about the Martian ionosphere. This paper describes this kind ofdata, which are available from the public Planetary Science Archive, andintroduces the MAISDAT tool developed by the European Space Agency toanalyze and derive the vertical profile of electron density. Comparisonswith radio occultation profiles obtained from Mars Express Radio Scienceinstrument are performed to validate the procedure used in this study.