Abigail Azari

Abigail Azari

Data Science Postdoctoral Fellow at University of British Columbia

Planetary Systems Plasma Transport I. Terrestial Planets

The Mars of several billion years ago is a very different Mars than that of today. Several billion years ago, Mars was geologically active from core to crust, possessed a much thicker atmosphere, and had an internally produced magnetic field.

Today, remnants of this former magnetic field remain, in effect frozen into the surface of Mars. A currently orbiting spacecraft, MAVEN, has obtained measurements above these fields; allowing for the large-scale characterization of these remnants to provide insight into to the historical evolution and eventual, termination, of Mars’ formerly active field. See below for a video of some current work. We are working on teasing apart this interaction using Bayesian methods as funded through a NASA AI Use Case grant.

Eastward Solar Wind Magnetic Field

Snapshot of a video of MAVEN magnetic field data evolving as Mars rotates, building toward a global scale data driven understanding of Mars' magnetic field interaction with the solar wind. Click to watch on YouTube.