Mars Perseverance Sol 965– Left Navigation Camera: A halo imaged on sol 965, in the final image taken by Perseverances Navigation cameras before conjunction and the end of the cloudy season. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech. On Mars, the Perseverance rover faces obstacles in studying the atmosphere, such as recording short-term phenomena like clouds and dust devils.Studying the atmosphere with NASAs Perseverance Mars rover can be challenging! Imagine spotting a fascinating cloud in an image taken yesterday; unlike something intriguing on the surface area, more observations just arent possible, as its long passed now. Or picture trying to take a motion picture of a dust devil zooming across Jezero crater, when the rovers daily activities are all prepared out before the rover even wakes up.The reality that lots of atmospheric phenomena are tough and/or temporary to forecast, and frequently only occur throughout certain period, indicates that climatic researchers on the Mars 2020 group must utilize different techniques to observe them.Observation Strategies and ToolsFirstly, the sensors that make up the primary atmospheric instrument (the Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer, MEDA) make meteorological and associated observations constantly a minimum of every other hour of every sol. This offers us a great possibility of catching hard-to-predict and transient phenomena.Secondly, for sensing units that cant determine as frequently– like the electronic cameras and microphone– we take measurements over numerous sols at different times and (for imaging) instructions, to develop statistics on when and where fascinating phenomena occur.This illustration portrays NASAs Perseverance rover operating on the surface of Mars. Credit: NASAAdapting to Environmental ChangesThirdly, when we expect to see something unusual based on the time of year or place, we increase the cadence of measurements to make certain we record that event. In Perseverances very first year on Mars we observed a spreading halo towards the end of Marss cloudy season. When lots of water vapor is present, this bright ring around the Sun is caused by big hexagonal ice crystals that only form. Despite dozens of attempts to image another in the second Mars year, it wasnt until our last effort– ideal before the cloudy season ended– that we saw one (see figure at top of post)! And lastly, when a longer-lived uncommon occasion is underway, we respond by including more measurements. There are presently lots of dust storms taking place on Mars, and with some passing right over Jezero weve just recently determined the biggest dust opacities of the entire mission to date! Weve been taking additional observations to inform us about how the climatic state, dustiness, and local dust lifting have been altering due to this storm activity.Insights and DiscoveriesFor many of these observations, we dont know if well even catch the atmospheric phenomena were trying to study up until we get the results back on Earth. Even understanding when, where, and under what conditions something does not take place is very helpful. And by standing firm, weve been able to obtain fantastic observations of whatever from halos and clouds to dust devils and the start of dust storms.
