Dust, Sand, and Winds Within an Active Martian Storm in Jezero Crater

Abstract

Rovers and landers on Mars have experienced local, regional, and planetary‐scale dust storms. However, in situ documentation of active lifting within storms has remained elusive. Over 5–11 January 2022 (LS 153°–156°), a dust storm passed over the Perseverance rover site. Peak visible optical depth was ∼2, and visibility across the crater was briefly reduced. Pressure amplitudes and temperatures responded to the storm. Winds up to 20 m s−1 rotated around the site before the wind sensor was damaged. The rover imaged 21 dust‐lifting events—gusts and dust devils—in one 25‐min period, and at least three events mobilized sediment near the rover. Rover tracks and drill cuttings were extensively modified, and debris was moved onto the rover deck. Migration of small ripples was seen, but there was no large‐scale change in undisturbed areas. This work presents an overview of observations and initial results from the study of the storm.

Acoustics Reveals Short‐Term Air Temperature Fluctuations Near Mars' Surface

“…This event could correspond to an increased turbulence due to the regional dust storm observed at Jezero between Sols 313 and 318; turbulence reinforcement in a dustier context is predicted by LES accounting for dust transport, for example, Wu et al (2021). This event also matches with the timing of an excess grain motion between two consecutive SuperCam images of this target, confirming the strong atmospheric activity at this time (Lemmon et al, 2022). Therefore, microphone data could have caught shear-driven gusts, as already observed on Mars by InSight (Chatain et al, 2021).…”

“…The agreement with both warm and climatology scenarii is excellent up to L s = 140°. Thereafter, the in situ data match better with the warm scenario (Figure 2a) which is concomitant with the increase of dust seen at Jezero (Lemmon et al, 2022), making this season warmer than the multi-year averaged prediction. In fact, daytime atmospheric temperatures after L s = 130° remain even higher than the MCD predictions for the warm scenario, highlighting the strong impact of local dust lifting events occurring in Jezero on the near-surface temperatures (Newman et al, 2022).…”

Winds at the Mars 2020 Landing Site: 1. Near‐Surface Wind Patterns at Jezero Crater

“…Measurements obtained during the first few sols of the mission suggested that wind patterns are mainly controlled by regional and local slope flows in accordance with pre-landing model simulations (e.g., Newman et al, 2021). Perseverance also characterized an early MY36/2022A regional dust storm (RDS) in January 2022, which produced several dust-lifting events (Lemmon et al, 2022). The strong aeolian activity present at Jezero has had side effects on the instrumentation.…”

Winds at the Mars 2020 Landing Site. 2. Wind Variability and Turbulence

“…But once saltation is initiated, it can be sustained at much lower wind speeds (e.g., Bridges et al, 2012;Kok, 2010). This raises the possibility that aeolian changes documented at Jezero (Lemmon et al, 2022;Newman et al, 2022) might involve relatively brief instances of winds exceeding (bottom) Histograms for wind speeds observed in pressure drops events: (bottom-left) peak wind speed reached during the passage, (bottom-middle) as in left but normalized to the mean wind speed just before the events, and (bottom-right) ratio between the mean wind speeds in the event and just before the event.…”