Martian Ionosphere Electron Density Prediction Using Bagged Trees

The availability of Martian atmospheric data provided by several Martian missions broadened the opportunity to investigate and study the conditions of the Martian ionosphere. As such, ionospheric models play a crucial part in improving our understanding of ionospheric behavior in response to different spatial, temporal, and space weather conditions. This work represents an initial attempt to construct an electron density prediction model of the Martian ionosphere using machine learning. The model targets the ionosphere at solar zenith ranging from 70 to 90 degrees, and as such only utilizes observations from the Mars Global Surveyor mission. The performance of different machine learning methods was compared in terms of root mean square error, coefficient of determination, and mean absolute error. The bagged regression trees method performed best out of all the evaluated methods. Furthermore, the optimized bagged regression trees model outperformed other Martian ionosphere models from the literature (MIRI and NeMars) in finding the peak electron density value, and the peak density height in terms of root-mean-square error and mean absolute error.Comment: The peer-reviewed paper is available at: https://doi.org/10.1109/ICECTA57148.2022.999050

The high energy astrophysics group in the light of SHARJAH-SAT-1 and future projects

The newly formed High Energy Astrophysics (HEA) Group at the Sharjah Academy of Astronomy, Space Science, and Technology (SAASST) and the University of Sharjah (UoS) focuses on the accretion processes onto compact objects, mainly on neutron stars and black holes, across the electromagnetic spectrum. Our research lies on observations of Galactic black holes as well as accreting neutron stars in both high and low mass X-ray binary systems. An extensive research programme on accreting compact objects utilizes an armada of X-ray observsatories (e.g., XMM-Newton/ESA, Chandra/NASA, INTEGRAL/ESA, Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory/NASA, NuStar/NASA, etc) alongside major ground-based facilities such as the European's Southen Observatory (ESO), Very Large Telescope (VLT) and smaller 1m-class telescopes. Besides the observational part, in our research group we are using an advanced inventory of state-of-the-art tools such as (magneto)hydrodynamical and General-Relativistic (magneto)hydrodynamical simulations, alongside radiative transfer and ray-tracing tools to further study and shed light onto the elusive nature of these accreting compact objects and their surrounding environment. Moreover, this group will provide a direct science exploitation of the forthcoming 3U CubeSat SHARJAHSAT-1. The primary science payload on board is the iXRD (developed by Sabanci University) which will provide an improved version of XRD on board BeEagleSat. The leading technology behind iXRD is a CdZnTe-based crystal, operational in the hard X-rays regime, between 20 and 200 keV energy range. The target spectral resolution of the detector is 6 keV at 60 keV. Its' main science goal of the mission is long term monitoring of the brightest galactic X-ray sources, transient and persistent. Black holes and pulsars can emit radiation up to a few 100 keVs making them ideal targets. In addition, hard X-ray spectra from solar flare and coronal holes will be studied. Transient bright events, such as gamma-ray burst (GRB) and magnetar bursts will be studied as well as target of opportunities (TOO). Currently the project is at the Critical Design Review (CDR) level and the anticipated launch is planned for early-to-mid 2021