Vertical sheets of dense plasma in the topside Martian ionosphere

The low-frequency radar, Mars Advanced Radar for Subsurface and Ionosphere Sounding (MARSIS), on board the Mars Express spacecraft is used to sound electron densities in the topside Martian ionosphere. The radar records the delay times to echoes of reflected radio waves as a function of frequency, yielding spectrograms with traces of radar echoes. At times, two traces are present in spectrograms of the Martian ionosphere. One of these traces corresponds to reflections from the direction to nadir. The other trace originates in a localized reflector in the ionosphere. The local reflectors can be associated with the cusplike regions of near-vertical crustal magnetic fields. The apparent nadir angle of reflection can occasionally increase to 90 degrees. This suggests that steep gradients of the altitude of the electron isodensity exist in the Martian ionosphere and indicates rapid horizontal spatial variations of vertical diffusion of Martian plasma. Such gradients may arise owing to preferential access of solar wind to the cusplike regions or to precipitation of energetic electrons from acceleration regions located on cusp magnetic field lines high above the ionosphere.