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The atmosphere of Mars as observed by InSight

Abstract

The atmosphere of Mars is thin, although rich in dust aerosols, and covers a dry surface. As such, Mars provides an opportunity to expand our knowledge of atmospheres beyond that attainable from the atmosphere of the Earth. The InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) lander is measuring Mars’s atmosphere with unprecedented continuity, accuracy and sampling frequency. Here we show that InSight unveils new atmospheric phenomena at Mars, especially in the higher-frequency range, and extends our understanding of Mars’s meteorology at all scales. InSight is uniquely sensitive to large-scale and regional weather and obtained detailed in situ coverage of a regional dust storm on Mars. Images have enabled high-altitude wind speeds to be measured and revealed airglow—faint emissions produced by photochemical reactions—in the middle atmosphere. InSight observations show a paradox of aeolian science on Mars: despite having the largest recorded Martian vortex activity and dust-devil tracks close to the lander, no visible dust devils have been seen. Meteorological measurements have produced a catalogue of atmospheric gravity waves, which included bores (soliton-like waves). From these measurements, we have discovered Martian infrasound and unexpected similarities between atmospheric turbulence on Earth and Mars. We suggest that the observations of Mars’s atmosphere by InSight will be key for prediction capabilities and future exploration.

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Fig. 1: After successful EDL, InSight now provides continuous weather data for Mars.
Fig. 2: The Martian meteorology of three typical sols experienced by InSight shows a diversity of scales involved from the planetary scale to local turbulent scales.
Fig. 3: Despite its equatorial location, InSight’s pressure and wind daily variability are sensitive to the weather in Mars’s mid-latitudes, dominated by baroclinic instability.
Fig. 4: InSight unveiled pressure fluctuations probably related to gravity waves, bores and solitary waves and infrasound.
Fig. 5: Daytime dust-devil-like convective vortices are very active at the InSight landing site and caused at least one solar-panel cleaning event witnessed by InSight.
Fig. 6: The InSight pressure sensor explores a new territory of high-frequency turbulence on Mars.

Data availability

The raw to calibrated datasets of InSight are available via the Planetary Data System (PDS). Data are delivered to the PDS according to the InSight Data Management Plan available in the InSight PDS archive. Data from the APSS pressure sensor and the temperature and wind (TWINS) sensor referenced in this paper are available from the PDS Atmospheres node. The direct link to the InSight data archive at the PDS Atmospheres node is https://atmos.nmsu.edu/data_and_services/atmospheres_data/INSIGHT/insight.html. Other data used in this paper are available from the imaging node (ICC and IDC images) and the geosciences node (SEIS and HP3) of the PDS. SEIS data are also available from the Data center of Institut de Physique du Globe, Paris at https://doi.org/10.18715/SEIS.INSIGHT.XB_2016. Meteorology InSight data from the latest acquired sols can be found in the following user-friendly interface at https://mars.nasa.gov/insight/weather/.

Code availability

The Python codes developed to produce the figures directly from the InSight files in the PDS Atmospheres node are available in the online repository at https://github.com/aymeric-spiga/insight-atmosphere-nature-geoscience.

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Acknowledgements

All co-authors acknowledge NASA, CNES and its partner agencies and institutions (UKSA, SSO, DLR, JPL, IPGP-CNRS, ETHZ, IC and MPS-MPG) and the flight operations team at JPL, CAB, SISMOC, MSDS, IRIS-DMC and PDS for providing InSight data. The members of the InSight engineering and operations teams made the InSight mission possible and their hard work and dedication is acknowledged here. A portion of this research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration. Additional work was supported by NASA’s InSight Participating Scientist Program. The French co-authors acknowledge the French Space Agency CNES, which funded scientific activities and supported SEIS-related contracts and CNES employees. Additional funding support was provided by Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-14-CE36-0012-02 SIMARS and ANR-19-CE31-0008-08 MAGIS). Atmospheric modelling used HPC resources of CINES (Centre Informatique National de l’Enseignement Supérieur) under the allocations A0040110391 and A0060110391 attributed by GENCI (Grand Equipement National de Calcul Intensif). The Spanish co-authors acknowledge funding by the Centro de Desarrollo Tecnológico e Industrial (CDTI), Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad and the Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aeroespacial (INTA). The Swiss co-authors acknowledge funding by the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNF-ANR project 157133) and the Swiss State Secretariat for Education, Research and Innovation (SEFRI project MarsQuake Service-Preparatory Phase). The UK co-authors acknowledge funding by the UK Space Agency. This paper is InSight Contribution Number 103.

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Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Contributions

D.B. and A.S. equally led the investigations described here within the InSight Atmospheres Science Theme Group, carried out the analysis reported in this paper on all topics, submitted event request proposals related to atmospheric science and wrote the paper. C.N., F.F., D.V.-M., E.M. and S.R.L. analysed InSight meteorological data to support the large-scale weather studies. M.L, R.L., J.N.M. and A. Määttänen analysed InSight imaging and solar array data to support the dust aerosol and cloud studies. N.M., J.P.-G., R.F.G., L.M., B.K., L.R., R.W.-S., D.M. and K.H. analysed InSight meteorological data to support turbulence, gravity-wave and infrasound studies. P.L., N.T., T.K., J.B.M., A.E.S., T.W., W.T.P. and E.B. analysed InSight seismic data and submitted event request proposals to support the atmospheric science studies, especially related to turbulence. O.K. and B.V.H. analysed InSight EDL data to retrieve the entry profile. J.C., S.C.S., S.C. and D.G. routinely analysed InSight seismic and pressure data within the Mars Quake Service to detect atmospheric events. C.P., S.R., I.D., A.J. and A. Lucas analysed HiRISE images to support the dust devil tracks studies. N.T.M. and T.S. analysed InSight radiometer surface temperature measurements to support the atmospheric science studies. C.C., M.G., M.B. and V.A. analysed InSight imaging and wind data to support aeolian science studies. C.L.J., A. Mittelholz and C.T.R. analysed InSight magnetometer data to support studies of the atmosphere-induced magnetic signatures. L.M.-S., S.N., J.T., A. Lepinette, A. Molina., M.M.-J., J.G.-E., V.P. and J.-A.R.-M. produced the wind and temperature data from TWINS raw measurements and provided guidance on interpreting these measurements. B.T.C. and S.S. built the Mars Weather Service interface used by the team to explore the InSight meteorological data. W.B.B. and S.E.S. lead the InSight mission and helped to place this study in the broader context of the whole InSight mission. All authors contributed to the investigations, manipulated part of the InSight data reported in this paper and provided comments in the process of writing this paper.

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Correspondence to Don Banfield or Aymeric Spiga.

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Extended data

Extended Data Fig. 1 Location of the InSight landing site on Mars, along with other landers and rovers having operated at the surface of Mars.

PIA22232 with added longitude/latitude coordinates.

Extended Data Fig. 2 Correspondence between InSight sols and solar longitude Ls for the first 200 sols of the InSight mission.

Further details on solar longitude are provided in the Methods Section.

Extended Data Fig. 3 Wavelet analysis of excerpts of the pressure signal in Figure 3a.

Analysis is shown for northern winter (a), regional dust storm conditions (b), and northern spring (c,d). Colors show power spectra (brighter colors for higher power spectra, x-axes show the InSight sol, y-axes show detected periods). Power spectra are only shown inside the cone of influence.

Extended Data Fig. 4 Atmospheric flows related to the moderate regional slope surrounding the InSight landing site account for the diurnal variability in wind direction.

The left panels show the topography and the simulated diurnal cycle of wind direction in the global climate model referenced in the pre-landing study7. The right panels show the exact same simulation with flattened topography set as indicated in the top right plot. The thermal tides signal (e.g. in the diurnal cycle of atmospheric pressure) is similar in the two simulations.

Extended Data Fig. 5 Nighttime atmospheric measurements by InSight on sol 142, showing simultaneous gravity-wave oscillations of pressure and winds.

(a) Perturbations of the zonal and meridional wind components, obtained by first removing high-frequency fluctuations from raw wind measurements using a 100-s smoothing window, then subtracting the long-term variations obtained by a 3700-s (one martian-hour) smoothing window. (b) Perturbations of pressure obtained similarly as (a), except 100-s low-pass filtering is not performed. (c) Wavelet analysis of the perturbation zonal component shown in (a), with similar range on the x-axis as in (a). (d) Same as (c) for the perturbation pressure shown in (b).

Extended Data Fig. 6 Nighttime atmospheric measurements by InSight on sol 150, showing simultaneous gravity-wave oscillations of pressure and winds.

Figures follow the same principles and organization as Extended Data Fig. 5.

Extended Data Fig. 7 The 15 strongest vortex induced pressure drops detected by InSight in the first 220 sols of operations.

The values of pressure drops in this table, as well as in Figures 5a and 5b, are obtained after removing from pressure measurements the low-frequency pressure variations obtained by applying a 1000-s smoothing window.

Extended Data Fig. 8 InSight wind speed measurements shown for the first 220 sols of operations (only sols with complete wind measurements are included in this figure).

In each 3-hour bin, (a) standard deviation, (b) average wind speed, and (c) maximum wind speed are displayed. The red dots denote the points corresponding to the bin in the interval 18-21 hours LMST, which is the evening ‘quiet’ regime described in the main text.

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Banfield, D., Spiga, A., Newman, C. et al. The atmosphere of Mars as observed by InSight. Nat. Geosci. 13, 190–198 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41561-020-0534-0

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