EP023-08
One Martian Year of Dust Devil Tracks Around the InSight Landing Site, Mars: analysis of HiRISE images and Comparison with in-situ Atmospheric Data.

Wednesday, 9 December 2020: 10:58
Virtual
Clément Perrin1, Julie Losen2, Sebastien Rodriguez3, Alice Jacob4, Antoine Lucas5, Aymeric Spiga6, Naomi Murdoch7, Ralph D Lorenz8, Ingrid Daubar9, Lu Pan10, Taichi Kawamura11, Philippe Henri Lognonné4, Donald J Banfield12, Maria Banks13, Raphael F. Garcia14, Claire E Newman15, Lujendra Ohja16, Rudolf Widmer-Schnidrig17, McEwen Alfred18 and William Bruce Banerdt19, (1)Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris, Paris, France, (2)IPGP, Paris, France, (3)AIM - CEA/CNRS/Uni. P7, Gif/Yvette, France, (4)Université de Paris, Institut de physique du globe de Paris, CNRS, Paris, France, (5)CEA/SACLAY, Paris, France, (6)LMD/IPSL, Sorbonne Université, Paris, France - Institut Universitaire de France, France, Palaiseau Cedex, France, (7)Institut Supérieur de l’Aéronautique et de l’Espace, DEOS/SSPA, Toulouse, France, (8)JHU / APL, Laurel, MD, United States, (9)Univ of AZ-Planetary Sciences, Tucson, AZ, United States, (10)LGLTPE Laboratoire de Géologie de Lyon : Terre, Planètes et Environnement, Villeurbanne Cedex, France, (11)Université de Paris, Institut de physique du globe de Paris, Paris, France, (12)Cornell University, Center for Radiophysics and Space Research, Ithaca, NY, United States, (13)Smithsonian Inst, Washington, DC, United States, (14)Institut Supérieur de l'Aéronautique et de l'Espace, DEOS/SSPA, Toulouse Cedex 04, France, (15)Aeolis Research, Tucson, AZ, United States, (16)Department of Earth and Planetary Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, United States, (17)Black Forest Observatory, Wolfach, Germany, (18)University of Arizona, Tucson, United States, (19)JPL/NASA/Caltech, Pasadena, CA, United States
Recorded Presentation
Abstract:
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 (HiRISE) to monitor dust devil activity during almost one martian year. We detected and mapped newly formed dust devil tracks and analyze their characteristics (sizes, azimuths, distances, and directions of motion). Tracks are characterized by dark linear traces ranging from a few meters to more than ten meters wide and oriented in the ambient wind direction, that can be directly compared to wind direction recorded by the InSight lander’s meteorological package. We describe the seasonal variation of dust-devil track formation in Elysium Planitia: the highest activity is seen in early winter and late spring-early summer, while a decrease in activity is observed in late summer-early autumn and late winter. There is a good agreement between dust-devil formation rates estimated from orbit, and the number of pressures drops and the ambient wind speed recorded onboard InSight, while it is not correlated with surface-to-air temperature variations. This indicates that the seasonal variation of dust devil activity in Elysium Planitia is mainly governed by the advection effect.
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