The atmosphere of Mars as observed by InSight

Banfield, D.; Spiga, Aymeric; Newman, C. E.; Forget, F.; Lemmon, M. T.; Lorenz, Ralph D.; Murdoch, Naomi; Viúdez‐Moreiras, Daniel; Pla‐García, Jorge; Garcia, Raphaël; Lognonné, Philippe; Karatekin, Özgür; Perrin, C.; Martire, Léo; Teanby, N. A.; Hove, Bart Van; Maki, J. N.; Kenda, B.; Müller, N.; Rodríguez, S.; Kawamura, Taïchi; McClean, John; Stott, Alexander; Charalambous, Constantinos; Millour, Ehouarn; Johnson, C. L.; Mittelholz, A.; Määttänen, Anni; Lewis, S. R.; Clinton, John; Stähler, Simon C.; Ceylan, Savas; Giardini, Domenico; Warren, T.; Pike, W. T.; Daubar, I. J.; Golombek, M.; Rolland, Lucie; Widmer‐Schnidrig, Rudolf; Mimoun, David; Beucler, É.; Jacob, A. W. B.; Lucas, Antoine; Baker, Mariah; Ansan, V.; Hurst, K.; Mora-Sotomayor, Luis; Navarro, Sara; Torres, J.; Lépinette, Alain; Molina, A.; Marin-Jimenez, Mercedes; Gómez‐Elvira, Javier; Peinado, V.; Rodriguez-Manfredi, J. A.; Carcich, B.; Sackett, Stephen S.; Russell, C. T.; Spohn, Tilman; Smrekar, S. E.; Banerdt, W. B.

doi:10.1038/s41561-020-0534-0

Cited by 176 publications

(389 citation statements)

References 72 publications

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“…Note the 20 m radius dark spot around the lander, with the slightly brighter interior. The gradational extension of the dark spot to the southeast is along the prevailing wind direction from the northwest estimated from orbit 3 and measured by InSight early in the mission 41 . Note smaller dark spots associated with the backshell and heatshield, and the relatively fresh Sunrise crater 400 m to the east of the lander.…”

Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 96%

Geology of the InSight landing site on Mars

et al. 2020

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spacecraft landed successfully on Mars and imaged the surface to characterize the surficial geology. Here we report on the geology and subsurface structure of the landing site to aid in situ geophysical investigations. InSight landed in a degraded impact crater in Elysium Planitia on a smooth sandy, granule-and pebble-rich surface with few rocks. Superposed impact craters are common and eolian bedforms are sparse. During landing, pulsed retrorockets modified the surface to reveal a near surface stratigraphy of surficial dust, over thin unconsolidated sand, underlain by a variable thickness duricrust, with poorly sorted, unconsolidated sand with rocks beneath. Impact, eolian, and mass wasting processes have dominantly modified the surface. Surface observations are consistent with expectations made from remote sensing data prior to landing indicating a surface composed of an impactfragmented regolith overlying basaltic lava flows.

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Section: Resultsmentioning

confidence: 96%

Geology of the InSight landing site on Mars

et al. 2020

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“…The wind direction measured by InSight appears to be reasonably steady in the daytime hours (Banfield et al, ). Daily variability is also very moderate in the equatorial region where InSight landed; changes of wind direction are mostly seasonal, or driven by rare regional dust storms as occurred around Sol 50 (Banfield et al, ).…”

Section: Comparison With Insight Meteorological Measurements and Implmentioning

confidence: 96%

Monitoring of Dust Devil Tracks Around the InSight Landing Site, Mars, and Comparison With In Situ Atmospheric Data

Perrin

Rodríguez

Jacob

et al. 2020

Geophysical Research Letters

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The NASA InSight mission on Mars is a unique opportunity to study atmospheric processes both from orbit and in situ observations. We use post-landing high-resolution satellite images to monitor dust devil activity during the first 8 months of the mission. We perform mapping and semiautomatic detection of newly formed dust devil tracks and analyze their characteristics (sizes, azimuths, distances, and directions of motion). We find a large number of tracks appearing shortly after landing, followed by a significant decrease of activity during late winter, then a progressive increase during early spring. New tracks are characterized by dark linear, to slightly curvilinear, traces ranging from a few to more than 10 m wide. Tracks are oriented in the ambient wind direction, according to measurements made by InSight's meteorological sensors. The systematic analysis of dust devil tracks is useful to have a better understanding of atmospheric and aeolian activity around InSight. Plain Language SummaryThe NASA InSight mission landed on Mars in November 2018. It carries weather and seismic stations that are now working continuously. We are also able to observe the InSight region from orbit using high-resolution satellite images that have been acquired regularly over the first year of the InSight mission. They show a lot of dark traces on the surface, which are caused by whirlwinds called dust devils raising dust into the air. This phenomenon is not observed at the same rate over the entire year, as it depends on atmospheric conditions that vary with season. Our study with satellite images allows us to understand the characteristics of dust devil tracks and compare them with related measurements from the weather station on board InSight. These two sets of observations are well correlated to each other and provide significant constraints to better characterize the atmospheric activity around InSight and in the region of Elysium Planitia, Mars.

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“…This has been measured at intervals of typically a few sols from measurements of near‐Sun sky brightness from the imagers on InSight (Spiga et al, 2018), as on previous Mars missions (e.g., Lemmon et al, 2015). The initial value was around 0.7, but this grew dramatically over Sols 40–60 to a peak of 1.9 associated with a large dust storm and then declined back to a near steady state of 0.7 or so—see Banfield et al (2020) and Lisano and Bernard (2014).…”

Section: Long‐term Variationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Although vortex activity at InSight has been abundant (e.g., Banerdt et al, 2020; Banfield et al, 2020), no large cleaning events have been observed on InSight. However, a small cleaning was detected (Figure 8) at 14:52 UTC on 1 February 2019.…”

Section: Short‐term Solar Flux Variationsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Scientific Observations With the InSight Solar Arrays: Dust, Clouds, and Eclipses on Mars

Lorenz

Lemmon

Maki

et al. 2020

Earth and Space Science

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Records of solar array currents recorded by the InSight lander during its first 200 sols on Mars are presented. In addition to the geometric variation in illumination on seasonal and diurnal timescales, the data are influenced by dust suspended in the atmosphere and deposited on the solar panels. Although no dust devils have been detected by InSight's cameras, brief excursions in solar array currents suggest that at least some of the vortices detected by transient pressure drops are accompanied by dust. A step increase in array output (i.e., a "cleaning event") was observed to be directly associated with the passage of a strong vortex. Some quasiperiodic variations in solar array current are suggestive of dust variations in the planetary boundary layer. Nonzero array outputs before sunrise and after sunset are indicative of scattering in the atmosphere: A notable increase in evening twilight currents is observed associated with noctilucent clouds, likely of water or carbon dioxide ice. Finally, although the observations are intermittent (typically a few hours per sol) and at a modest sample rate (one to two samples per minute), three single-sample light dips are seen associated with Phobos eclipses. These results demonstrate that engineering data from solar arrays provide valuable scientific situational awareness of the Martian environment.

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The atmosphere of Mars as observed by InSight

Cited by 176 publications

References 72 publications

Geology of the InSight landing site on Mars

Geology of the InSight landing site on Mars

Monitoring of Dust Devil Tracks Around the InSight Landing Site, Mars, and Comparison With In Situ Atmospheric Data

Scientific Observations With the InSight Solar Arrays: Dust, Clouds, and Eclipses on Mars

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