Conclusions
-
(1)
Investigation by space probes have made it possible to obtain the altitude distributions of the charged particle densities on the sunlit and dark sides of Venus and in the daytime ionosphere of Mars.
-
(2)
The planets' ionospheres appear to be less dense and extended than the earth's and the regions of maximum electron density also lie much lower than in the earth's ionosphere.
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(3)
The outer boundary of the thermal plasma in the ionosphere of Venus lies much lower than in the earth's ionosphere (at altitudes of about 500–600 km from the surface on the planet's day-side while in the earth's ionosphere it lies at a height of about 30 000 km), which is mainly due to the fact that Venus has no intrinsic magnetic field.
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(4)
The earth's magnetic field is responsible for some essential peculiarities of the structure of the earth's ionosphere, which are absent in the ionospheres of Mars and Venus.
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(5)
A final choice between models of the types of the F2, F1 or E layers for describing the Martian and Venusian ionospheres by analogy with the earth's ionosphere is still premature since there are no unambiguous data on the composition and temperatures of the planets' neutral upper atmospheres.
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Gringauz, K.I., Breus, T.K. Comparative characteristics of the ionospheres of the planets of the terrestrial group: Mars, Venus, and the Earth. Space Sci Rev 10, 743–769 (1970). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00167338
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF00167338