PS01-D3-PM2-P-023 (PS01-A025)
 	
Solar Cycle Dependence of the Martian Space Weather

Andrea OPITZ1#+, Olivier WITASSE2, Eduardo SANCHEZ-DIAZ2, Nicolas ANDRE3, David ANDREWS4, Pierre-Louis BLELLY3, Eduard DUBININ5, Niklas EDBERG4, Andrei FEDOROV3, Markus FRAENZ5, Tim HOWARD6, Wlodek KOFMAN7, Mark LESTER8, Robert LILLIS9, Janet LUHMANN9, Christian MOESTL10, David D. MORGAN11, Dusan ODSTRCIL12, Hermann OPGENOORTH4, Kerstin PETER13, Jean-Andre SAUVAUD14, Paul WITHERS15, Jim WILD16

1 European Space Research and Technology Centre / European Space Agency, Netherlands, 2 European Space Research and Technology Centre/European Space Agency, Netherlands, 3 Research Institute Astrophysics and Planetology (IRAP), CNRS - University of Toulouse, France, 4 Swedish Institute of Space Physics, Uppsala, Sweden, 5 Max-Planck-Insitute for Solar System Research, Germany, 6 Southwest Research Institute, United States, 7 Laboratoire de Planetologie de Grenoble, (LPG), France, 8 University of Leicester, United Kingdom, 9 University of California, United States, 10 University of Graz, Austria, 11 University of Iowa, United States, 12 NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, United States, 13 University of Cologne, Germany, 14 Research Institute Astrophysics and Planetology (IRAP), University of Toulouse, France, 15 Boston University, United States, 16 Lancaster University, United Kingdom
#Corresponding author: aopitz@rssd.esa.int +Presenter

In order to characterize the space weather at Mars we extrapolate solar wind observations from nearby solar spacecraft when available. The best studied space environment is around Earth, there is an extended scientific community effort to describe the solar-terrestrial relations by numerous near-Earth solar monitors. In order to profit from this wealth of solar wind information and to improve the accuracy of our predictions, the Earth-Mars conjunction time periods were chosen to perform observations specially devoted to the study of solar wind and Mars interactions by the Mars Express spacecraft. These dedicated conjunction campaigns take place in Spring 2010, 2012 and 2014. During these campaigns the solar activity cycle is at different phases: the 2010 campaign was performed during a low-activity period typicaly dominated by CIRs, while the 2012 campaign studied the Martian plasma processes under stormy space weather conditions with multiple CMEs. We compare these two set of results with the upcoming 2014 campaign in order to derive the solar cycle dependence of the Martian space weather.