Study of the rheological properties of water and Martian soil simulant mixtures for engineering applications on the red planet

The rheological properties of mixtures of water and the Martian soil simulant JSC-Mars-1A are investigated by preparing and testing samples at various solids concentrations. The results indicate that the dispersion is viscoelastic and, at small timescales (～0.1?s), reacts to sudden strain as an elastic solid. At longer timescales the dispersion behaves like a Bingham fluid and exhibits a yield stress. Hysteresis loops show that rapid step-changes (2?s duration) of shear-rate result in thixotropic behaviour, but slower changes (>10?s duration) can result in rheopexy. These observations are explained with the breakdown and recovery of the packing structure under stress. The rheological information is used to generate practical tools, such as the system curve and the Moody chart that can be used for designing piping systems, and calculating pump sizes and pressure requirements.     

A comparative study of ionospheric IRIEup and ISP assimilative models during some intense and severe geomagnetic storms

Three-dimensional (3-D) electron density matrices, computed in the Mediterranean area by the IRI climatological model and IRIEup and ISP nowcasting models, during some intense and severe geomagnetic-ionospheric storms, were ingested by the ray tracing software tool IONORT, to synthesize quasi-vertical ionograms. IRIEup model was run in different operational modes: (1) assimilating validated autoscaled electron density profiles only from a limited area which, in our case, is the Mediterranean sector (IRIEup_re(V) mode); (2) assimilating electron density profiles from a larger region including several stations spread across Europe: (a) without taking care of validating the autoscaled data in the assimilation process (IRIEup(NV)); (b) validating carefully the autoscaled electron density profiles before their assimilation (IRIEup(V)).The comparative analysis was carried out comparing IRI, IRIEup_re(V), ISP, IRIEup(NV), and IRIEup(V) foF2 synthesized values, with corresponding foF2 measurements autoscaled by ARTIST, and then validated, at the truth sites of Roquetes (40.80°N, 0.50°E, Spain), San Vito (40.60°N, 17.80°E, Italy), Athens (38.00°N, 23.50°E, Greece), and Nicosia, (35.03°N, 33.16°E, Cyprus). The outcomes demonstrate that: (1) IRIEup_re(V), performs better than ISP in the western Mediterranean (around Roquetes); (2) ISP performs slightly better than IRIEup_re(V) in the central part of Mediterranean (around Athens and San Vito); (3) ISP performance is better than the IRIEup_re(V) one in the eastern Mediterranean (around Nicosia); (4) IRIEup(NV) performance is worse than the IRIEup(V) one; (5) in the central Mediterranean area, IRIEup(V) performance is better than the IRIEup_re(V) one, and it is practically the same for the western and eastern sectors.Concerning the overall performance, nowcasting models proved to be considerably more reliable than the climatological IRI model to represent the ionosphere behaviour during geomagnetic-ionospheric storm conditions; ISP and IRIEup(V) provided the best performance, but neither of them has clearly prevailed over the other one.     

Ground and satellite-based observations of ionospheric plasma bubbles and blobs at 5.65° latitude in the Brazilian sector

This investigation uses simultaneous observations from all-sky imager system and an ionosonde collocated at Araguatins (5.65° S, 48.07° W and dip-latitude of 4.17° S), a near-equatorial region in Brazil. These simultaneous observations were used to investigate the occurrence of plasma bubbles and blobs in the field of the imaging system and their association with atypical range Spread-F signature in ionograms. Also, in-situ observation of plasma density from Swarm satellites were used to support the ground-based observations. Using a few cases, a methodology will be established to identify in the plasma blobs (atypical ESF) in the ionograms when there is the simultaneous observation of plasma bubbles and blobs in the field of view of the ionosonde. For this purpose, simultaneous sequence of OI 630.0 nm nightglow images and ionograms are presented for different case studies; 1. when there is the absence of a plasma bubble or blob, 2. when there is only the occurrence of plasma bubbles and 3. when there is the occurrence of plasma bubbles and blobs, in order to compare traces in the ionogram in all these case studies. With these we can cover all kinds of signatures in the ionograms corresponding to no irregularities, plasma bubbles only and plasma bubbles-blobs. These OI 630.0 nm nightglow and ionograms recorded simultaneously make it possible to establish a novel methodology to recognize in ionograms cases when there is the occurrence of Spread-F signature associated with bubble-blob in the FOV of the ionosonde.     

Can an impulsive variation of the solar wind plasma pressure trigger a plasma bubble? A case study based on CSES,Swarm and THEMIS data

During the August 25, 2018 geomagnetic storm, the new borne CSES-01 satellite and the Swarm A satellite detected a really large equatorial plasma bubble (EPB) in the post-midnight sector over western Africa. We investigated the features of this deep ionospheric plasma depletion using data from the Langmuir probes on-board CSES-01 and Swarm A satellites, and data from the high-precision magnetometer and the electric field detector instruments on-board CSES-01. Using also plasma and magnetic field data from THEMIS-E satellite we found that, during the passage of the magnetic cloud that drove the geomagnetic storm, an impulsive variation lasting about ten minutes characterized the solar wind (SW) pressure. The analysis of the delay time, between the occurrence of such impulsive variation and the detection of the plasma bubble, suggests a possible link between the SW pressure impulsive variation as identified by THEMIS-E and the generation of the EPB as detected by CSES-01 and Swarm A. We put forward the hypothesis that the SW pressure impulsive variation might have triggered an eastward prompt penetrating electric field that propagated from high to equatorial latitudes, overlapping in the nightside region to the zonal westward electric field, causing either a reduction or an inversion, at the base of the EPB triggering.