Shayla Viet

• Retselis, Anastasios-Faidon; Knutsen, Elise Wright; Holdcroft, Sam; Viet, Shayla; Wahlén, Rebecka & Virdis, Mario [Show all 19 contributors for this article] (2026). CENSSAT-1: A space weather mission and an educational platform. In Detrell, Gisela; Alarcia, Ramón María García; Messina, Vincenzo & Kinnaird, Alexander (Ed.), Proceedings of the 5th Symposium on Space Educational Activities (SSEA). Technical University of Munich. p. 852–857. doi: 10.14459/2026MD1857465. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  The Symposium on Space Educational Activities (SSEA), organised by the European Space Agency’s Education Office, provides a forum for university students, professionals working in education, and other professionals in industry or agencies to present and discuss their experiences organising, running and/or participating in Educational Activities related to Space. After successful past events in Padova (2015), Budapest (2018), Leicester (2019), and Barcelona (2022), the 5th SSEA was held in April 2026 (the 8th, 9th, and 10th) in the TUM Aerospace Campus in Willy-Messerschmitt-Strasse 5, Taufkirchen, Germany. The local organisation team was led by the Technical University of Munich (TUM), involving Professors, PostDocs, PhD Candidates, and Master’s and Bachelor’s students, in close collaboration with the Bavarian aerospace ecosystem partners.

• Knutsen, Elise Wright; McConnochie, Timothy H.; Lemmon, Mark; Donaldson, Chris; Francis, Raymond & Legett, Carey [Show all 28 contributors for this article] (2025). Detection of visible-wavelength aurora on Mars. Science Advances. 11(20). doi: 10.1126/sciadv.ads1563. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Mars hosts various auroral processes despite the planet’s tenuous atmosphere and lack of a global magnetic field. To date, all aurora observations have been at ultraviolet wavelengths from orbit. We describe the discovery of green visible-wavelength aurora, originating from the atomic oxygen line at 557.7 nanometers, detected with the SuperCam and Mastcam-Z instruments on the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover. Near–real-time simulations of a Mars-directed coronal mass ejection (CME) provided sufficient lead-time to schedule an observation with the rover. The emission was observed 3 days after the CME eruption, suggesting that the aurora was induced by particles accelerated by the moving shock front. To our knowledge, detection of aurora from a planetary surface other than Earth has never been reported, nor has visible aurora been observed at Mars. This detection demonstrates that auroral forecasting at Mars is possible, and that during events with higher particle precipitation, or under less dusty atmospheric conditions, aurorae will be visible to future astronauts.

View all works in NVA

• Wright, Elise Knutsen; Oikonomou, Foteini & Viet, Shayla (2025). The SWEET method for complementing instrument data on solar energetic particle events at Mars. Norges teknisk-naturvitenskapelige universitet. Full text in Research Archive Show summary

  Knowledge of the Martian radiation environment is becoming increasingly important as space agencies are in the process of planning the first manned expeditions to Mars. Astronauts spending extended amounts of time in deep space are exposed to hazardous radiation doses, while instruments suffer damage, some permanent, from space weather events. In particular, Solar Energetic Particles (SEPs) are sporadic and may deliver high doses of radiation on short timescales, on top of the omnipresent energetic Galactic Cosmic Rays background. The radiation environment on Mars is generally harsher than on Earth due to the thinner atmosphere and the lack of a global magnetic field. Still, few space missions carry instruments dedicated to the monitoring of SEPs. However, all spacecraft carry housekeeping sensors distributed in various subsystems. Some, such as the Error Detection and Correction (EDAC) parameter, are responsive to space weather. The main objective of this work is to demonstrate how the Space Weather Event EDAC Tracker (SWEET) can complement data from instruments in orbit and on the surface of Mars during space weather events. The development of SWEET, a routine to detect SEP events and Forbush Decreases in an EDAC counter from Mars Express (MEX), is continued in this work where the specialization project completed by the author in Fall 2024 left off. The energies required to cause EDAC increments are investigated closer, and are revealed to be less than previous estimations. As the MEX EDAC has continuous data going back to 2004, SWEET finds events during a time period of almost two complete solar activity cycles, and an estimate of the number of space weather events during solar maximum and minimum at Mars is obtained. SWEET reveals dates of events that have previously not been detected by dedicated instrumentation. The number SWEET detections follow the solar activity cycle. The thesis illustrates with substantial evidence that EDAC counters are highly useful to bridge the knowledge gap on radiation at Mars

View all works in NVA