Exploring Mars’ Atmosphere with Perseverance: Strategies and Discoveries

2024-04-23 01:10:45

Mars Perseverance Sol 965 – Navigation Camera Left: A halo imaged on Sol 965, in the final image taken by Perseverance’s navigation cameras before merging and the end of the cloudy season. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.

On

Mars

Mars is the second smallest planet in our solar system and the fourth planet from the sun. It is a dusty, cold, desert world with a very thin atmosphere. Iron oxide is prevalent in Mars’ surface resulting in its reddish color and its nickname "The Red Planet." Mars’ name comes from the Roman god of war.

” data-gt-translate-attributes=”({” attribute=”” tabindex=”0″ role=”link”>מַאְדִיםThe Perseverance rover faces challenges in studying the atmosphere, such as capturing transient phenomena such as clouds and dust devils.

studying the atmosphere with

NASA

Established in 1958, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is an independent agency of the United States Federal Government that succeeded the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA). It is responsible for the civilian space program, as well as aeronautics and aerospace research. Its vision is "To discover and expand knowledge for the benefit of humanity." Its core values are "safety, integrity, teamwork, excellence, and inclusion." NASA conducts research, develops technology and launches missions to explore and study Earth, the solar system, and the universe beyond. It also works to advance the state of knowledge in a wide range of scientific fields, including Earth and space science, planetary science, astrophysics, and heliophysics, and it collaborates with private companies and international partners to achieve its goals.

” data-gt-translate-attributes=”({” attribute=”” tabindex=”0″ role=”link”>נאס”אPerseverance’s Mars Rover can be challenging! Imagine noticing an interesting cloud in a picture taken yesterday; Unlike something interesting on the surface, further observations are simply not possible, because it is long gone. Or imagine trying to shoot a movie of a dust devil approaching Jezero Crater, with all of the rover’s daily activities planned before the rover even wakes up.

The fact that many atmospheric phenomena are short-lived and/or difficult to predict, often occurring only during certain periods of time, means that the atmospheric scientists on the Mars 2020 team must use different strategies to observe them.

Strategies and tools for observation

First, the sensors that make up the main atmospheric instrument (the Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer, MEDA) make continuous meteorological and companion observations at least every other hour of each Sol. This gives us a very good chance of catching transitory and hard-to-predict phenomena.

Second, for sensors that cannot measure at the same frequency – such as the cameras and the microphone – we perform measurements across multiple batteries at different times and in different directions (for visualization purposes), to build statistics on when and where interesting phenomena occur.

This illustration depicts NASA’s Perseverance rover operating on the surface of Mars. Credit: NASA

adaptation to environmental changes

Third, when we expect to see something unusual based on the time of year or location, we increase the rate of measurements to make sure we capture that event. In Perseverance’s first year on Mars, we observed a dispersing halo near the end of the Martian cloudy season. This bright ring around the sun is caused by large hexagonal ice crystals that only form when there is a lot of water vapor. Despite dozens of attempts to imagine another in the second year of Mars, it was only until our last attempt – right Before the cloudy season ended – that we saw one (see illustration at the top of the article)!

And finally, when a longer rare event occurs, we respond by adding more measurements. There are currently many dust storms occurring on Mars, and with some of them passing right over Jezero, we recently measured the greatest dust opacity of the entire mission to date! So we made additional observations to tell us how the atmospheric state, the dust, and the local dust upwelling changed due to this storm activity.

insights and discoveries

For many of these observations, we don’t know if we’ll even ‘catch’ the atmospheric phenomena we’re trying to study until we get the results back to Earth. But even knowing when, where and under what conditions something No occur very useful. And by persevering, we were able to get fantastic views of everything from clouds and halos to dust devils and erupting dust storms.