Dust Storm and Jezero Crater: Images obtainedJan 9, 2022, from the Mars Color Imager instrument on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter were integrated to develop this view revealing the existence of a local dust storm obscuring the place of Perseverance rover and Ingenuity Mars Helicopter (white circle). Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ MSSS
Flight 19 for NASA‘s Ingenuity is set up to occur no earlier than Sunday, January 23, 2022.
The environment of Mars is much less thick than Earth’s; nevertheless, the Mars environment shares lots of resemblances to Earth: seasons, altering winds, ice clouds, and dust storms, to name a few. Predicting weather condition occasions, as holds true for Earth, is constantly an unpredictable undertaking. In getting ready for Flight 19, we discovered that unforeseen Mars weather condition can lead to a familiar and regrettable circumstance here on Earth: a postponed flight. Fortunately, Ingenuity brings no guests, and all its baggage is “carry-on,” so the effect is little bit more than waiting on much better weather condition.
With 18 flights finished to date, weather condition forecasting has actually ended up being an essential piece of Martian flight preparation. Since the very first flight on April 19, 2021, Jezero Crater has actually advanced through spring and into summertime. We are presently approaching completion of summertime and the start of fall, which begins February24 With the altering seasons come brand-new difficulties, consisting of a decline in air density that needed adjustments to how we fly.
As weather condition forecasters, our task is to offer an assessment of present climate condition versus flight requirements. What are these requirements for appropriate and safe flying? Favorable conditions depend upon 2 essential residential or commercial properties: air density and wind speed. Although we do not have the benefit of a a great deal of weather condition stations or orbiting weather condition satellites at Mars, as holds true on Earth, we do have a variety of tools at our disposal to identify if conditions are appropriate for flight. The most helpful forecasting resource is the Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer (MEDA)– an operating weather condition station aboard the Perseverance rover. Using this effective suite of instruments, we can compute the air density and step winds throughout the day and track their modifications with season as we get ready for future flights. We are not without support from orbital possessions, either– both the Mars Color Imager (MARCI) and Mars Climate Sounder (MCS) aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) offer everyday updates on the state of the environment– helpful for understanding activity beyond Jezero crater that might affect future weather condition.
As Mars shifts into fall, we anticipate a boost in the quantity of dust in the environment worldwide; levels will stay increased through winter season (this duration of the year is described as the “dusty season”). Dust plays a significant function in Mars’ environment, and its characterization is particularly essential for solar-powered surface area possessions likeIngenuity Atmospheric dust will reduce the quantity of sunshine that reaches Ingenuity’s photovoltaic panels, which charge the batteries required for flight. Furthermore, dust in the environment is warmed by sunshine and warms the surrounding environment, leading to a decrease of the already-low-density air in which Ingenuity need to fly. Members of the operations group have actually been actively going over the upcoming dirty season and how to react to the impacts of this altering environment.
A strong local dust storm appeared on the very first day of the brand-new year, incorporating Jezero crater simply as we set up Flight19 The existence of this storm came rather early– even prior to the dirty season typically begins! In truth, we have actually never ever seen a storm of this strength so early in the Mars year prior to. The very first indications of the approaching dust storm were identified by Perseverance, which observed increased dust lifting within Jezero crater. In orbit, MRO recorded pictures of this growing local dust storm, which revealed indications of growth from the southern hemisphere into the northern hemisphere– possibly towards Jezero crater. Our weather report group needed to decide to move forward with the flight or not. The information we evaluate from MEDA and orbital possessions can have a lag of a couple of hours to a couple of days, therefore we needed to make a projection for Flight 19 a couple of days into the future. It was clear that there was substantial unpredictability on the horizon. The weather condition group suggested delaying Flight 19, which was eventually embraced by the Ingenuity group (Flight 19 initially set up forJan 5, 2022, or Perseverance objective sol 313).
The grounding of Ingenuity showed to be the ideal choice. In the days following the flight hold-up, the dust storm moved over Jezero crater, and we had the ability to plainly see its impacts in both MEDA information and from orbit (Figure 1). Most noteworthy was a sharp drop in air density– about a 7% variance listed below what was observed pre-dust storm. This observed decline would have put density listed below the lower limit of safe flight and would have imparted unnecessary danger to the spacecraft. We likewise observed the result of dust in the quantity of sunshine soaked up by Ingenuity’s solar variety, which fell well listed below regular “clear sky” levels, a drop of about 18%.
The dust storm has actually dissipated, and today, it’s appearing like we’ll fly Ingenuity no earlier than this Sunday,Jan 23. The dust storm and its influence on preparation is a crucial knowing experience for the whole group. Future occasions later on in the dirty season are anticipated and have the prospective to become global-scale storms like those observed most just recently in 2018, 2007, and2001 We will stay persistent in our efforts to securely fly Ingenuity for the foreseeable future.
Written by Jonathan Bapst and Michael Mischna (Ingenuity Weather/Environment Team, NASA- JPL).
