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Mars has practically no magnetosphere. Where does the impact of a solar flare on the electronics of Mars landers and rovers fall along the scale of nothing to EMP?

peterh
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Chris B. Behrens
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    On electronics in general, yeah. – Chris B. Behrens Feb 11 '19 at 23:24
  • I would think that somebody better at the physics can come up with a generalized approximation, but that should be fine. – Chris B. Behrens Feb 11 '19 at 23:34
  • Please feel free to roll back or edit further. There's two ways you can ask this. 1) How bad have the known effects been in terms of experience, documented events related to known solar flares, or 2) "What would the effects be" or "How are electronics protected from". Maybe the EMP is a distraction to the question, you'd have to specify the yield of the detonation, and the distance, and there's a big problem with Mars' atmosphere being so thin that its harder to generate an EMP than on Earth – uhoh Feb 11 '19 at 23:39
  • See Would the EMP from atmospheric polar nuclear detonations on Mars felt by orbiting spacecraft be larger or smaller than (if it were) on Earth? and also this answer. I'd say if you are not really interested in EMP's it would be better to zero in on understanding the effects of a solar flare or CME. – uhoh Feb 11 '19 at 23:40
  • Do you think that the reader will be confused by the analogy? – Chris B. Behrens Feb 11 '19 at 23:53
  • People may start writing answers about EMP, then be frustrated if you aren't really interested in direct comparison. So I'm double checking if you really want people to go through the trouble of calculating EMP in a different kind of atmosphere (it has a big impact) and go into a discussion of electromagnetic shielding, or if you are really only interested in finding out more about the effects of solar flares and CMEs on electronics on Mars. The phenomenon are very different, and people may start suggesting that it is unclear what you are asking. – uhoh Feb 12 '19 at 00:03
  • Induced electromagnetic effects on electronics directly to solar flare = effectively no impact. Effect of energetic particles and photons incident on electronics = potential for single event upsets or heavy spacecraft charging if it's a really strong event and the spacecraft isn't EM clean. – honeste_vivere Feb 22 '21 at 22:58

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