An international team in which the Spanish university UPV/EHU participates advanced in the knowledge of the Martian atmosphere, discovering how dust rises on its surface, an investigation reflected in the article that is the cover of the latest issue of Science Advances.
In February of 2021 he arrived on Mars with the Mars mission 2020 of NASA and on the surface of the Jezero crater began to operate the Perseverance autonomous vehicle, a mobile laboratory.
One of its instruments is the MEDA meteorological station, developed at the Astrobiology Center-INTA in Madrid with the collaboration of the Planetary Sciences Group of the University of the Basque Country (northern Spain).
Deepening knowledge about the atmosphere on Mars
The analysis of the data that MEDA is providing is allowing us to delve into one of the aspects of the atmosphere ra of the red planet, the dust that rises from the surface, and was published in an article whose signatories include UPV/EHU professors Ricardo Hueso, Agustín Sánchez Lavega and Teresa del Río-Gaztelurrutia and doctoral student Asier Munguira.
“We can say that we are now beginning to understand the conditions necessary to lift dust from the surface of Mars, and this is a key element, because the red planet’s dust cycle will help to better understand the global meteorology of Mars”, explains Ricardo Hueso, second author of the article.
As the Martian atmosphere is much thinner than the terrestrial one (some 150 times less dense), the dust in suspension determines many of its thermal properties and how it heats up and cools down.
The Sciences Advances article studies the phenomena that raise dust on the surface of Mars including dust devils called The “dust devils” and the gusty winds capable of producing large dust clouds.
Jezero Crater
Thanks to the data collected on the wind, dust, temperature and other atmospheric variables, the investigation concludes that the Jezero crater, chosen as the study site for the Mars mission 2020 because, although today it is a desert, billions of years ago it was flooded, it is one of the most active and favorable places to raise large amounts of dust from its surface.
As explained in the article, daytime winds are ascending and, in general, intense, while at night the detected winds are descending and weaker. “It is the interaction of these wind currents with the surface that produces these massive dust lifting phenomena,” says Hueso.
“Prepare human exploration of Mars”
Dust from the atmosphere of Mars, when deposited on the surface, can cover solar panels and make it impossible for some surface space missions to function. However, this is not a worrying aspect for the Perseverance rover, which uses nuclear energy for its operations.
Hueso adds that knowing the atmosphere of Mars today is essential to understand its past and also “to prepare the human exploration of Mars” that they hope can be developed “in the coming decades”.
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