Comparison of observed plasma and magnetic field structures in the wakes of Mars and Venus

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Abstract
Plasma and magnetic field observations from the Phobos 2 spacecraft at Mars and the Pioneer Venus orbiter (PVO) at Venus show that there are some notable similarities in the structure of the low‐altitude magnetotails at both of these weakly magnetized planets. In particular, it is found that when conditions in the interplanetary medium are steady and the orbit sampling geometry is appropriate, two magnetic tail lobes, with an intervening “plasma sheet” or “central tail ray” in the approximate location of the dividing current sheet, are present. This behavior is seen in both the Phobos 2 ASPERA plasma analyzer data and in the PVO Langmuir probe data. In the Phobos 2 data, the tail ray is found to be composed primarily of antisunward streaming oxygen (O+) plasma which has a bulk velocity consistent with an energy close to that of the upstream solar wind plasma. The PVO Langmuir probe experiment also detected two (or more) additional cold plasma structures flanking the central feature; Phobos 2 data, on the other hand, show a proton plasma “boundary layer” flanking the central (mostly O+) tail ray or plasma sheet, with sporadic fluxes or rays of O+ ions. If the latter considered is to be the magnetosheath (solar wind plasma) at the tail boundary, it is mainly the common central tail O+ features that suggest that there are common planetary ion acceleration and magnetotail formation processes at work in the low‐altitude wakes of Mars and Venus. On the other hand, an important contribution from picked‐up exospheric hydrogen in the wake at Mars cannot be ruled out.