Weather information is essential in any daily planning, from day to day to any trip. If the latter is to Mars and with an expectation of years of research, data on the behavior of the tenuous Martian atmosphere is critical. He Perseverance, NASA’s autonomous vehicle that has been roaming the red planet since February 18, 2021, includes the MEDA (Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer either Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer), a program with a complex system of instruments designed by an international team from seven countries and led by the Spanish Astrobiology Center (CAB-CSIC-INTA), which has already collected 2,500 images and more than 10,000 hours of data on pressures, temperatures, winds, humidity and composition and behavior of the atmosphere. The team has analyzed in Seville, headquarters of the Spanish Space Agency, the challenges and threats of a fundamental mission to explore the planet, as well as the information that shows what the weather is like on Mars.
Since its landing one Martian year ago (equivalent to two Earth years), MEDA has not stopped working, despite winds of more than 100 kilometers per hour and storms capable of covering the entire surface of the planet. “We measure systematically. We permanently monitor all environmental parameters,” explains José Antonio Rodríguez Manfredi, principal investigator at MEDA and director of the Space Instrumentation Group at the Astrobiology Center.
The initial results were collected by Nature Geoscience last January. This month, researchers have updated the data obtained after hundreds of Martian sols (days) at the initiative of the Spanish Space Agency, the Institute of Microelectronics of Seville (US-CSIC joint center) and the National Institute of Aerospace Technology.
Dust. Rodríguez Manfredi explains that it is “the main element in the atmospheric dynamics” of Mars, where a global and permanent cycle of suspended particles is recorded. And it is also one of the challenges of MEDA. “It ends up affecting our teams, but we had mechanisms planned to mitigate the impact,” he clarifies. Special protectors and mechanisms swept magnetic are some of them, as well as equipment redundancy to complete and correct faulty data that a specific sensor may return.
Cells. Spanish research has made it possible to observe global patterns of atmospheric circulation (cells) that determine Martian weather, like on Earth the convective systems that circulate heat. And also the local behaviors in the Jezero crater, the large basin that explores the Perseverance and that it was formed by the impact of a meteorite about 3.5 billion years ago and housed a huge lake from which a river flowed. “These affect environmental parameters, in some aspects, more than global circulation,” says the researcher.
The study of this relationship between local and global micrometeorology is one of MEDA’s great achievements. “It provides high-precision meteorological measurements that allow us to characterize, for the first time, the Martian atmosphere from local scales at distances of a few meters, as well as on a global scale of the planet by collecting information about what is happening thousands of meters away. kilometers of distance. All of this will allow us to better understand the Martian climate and improve the predictive models we use,” says Agustín Sánchez-Lavega, professor at the Faculty of Engineering – Bilbao (EIB) and co-investigator of the Mars 2020 mission.
Extraterrestrial halos. The team led by Spain has also perceived, for the first time, an extraterrestrial halo. The halo perceived on Earth is caused by ice particles suspended in the troposphere by refracting light and generating a spectrum of colors around the Sun or Moon. “It had never been seen on another planet and it has been tremendously interesting,” highlights Rodríguez Manfredi.
![Clouds seen at the Martian dawn on March 18.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/zJICgyhtcXSkqOScw1VooJA2cb0=/414x0/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/L5PYAC6RQVDWXG4MJLHNLMH3KI.jpg)
Clouds. Daniel Toledo, researcher on the MEDA instrument team in the Payloads Department of INTA, highlights in a CSIC note that the “discovery of the halo provides key information about the properties of clouds on Mars.” Despite the presence of ice and cloud movements, no precipitation has been detected as we understand it on Earth. “Although there is water, steam and clouds, the conditions of low temperatures (about 50 degrees below zero in the Jezero area) and pressures (6.1 millibars on average compared to 1,013 on Earth) mean that it cannot precipitate in any way. of water. Being a little generous, with very specific conditions, these clouds can precipitate in the form of ice.”
Ice. This water is not usable by future human settlements. It is easier to resort to subsoil ice. But not at the poles, where, according to the team’s lead researcher, the temperature conditions (up to -140 degrees) and radiation are so extreme that they make these areas uninhabitable. The refuge for humans in the future is located at the equator of the planet, where in summer a maximum of between two and seven degrees positive can be reached. But any exit to the outside is limited, since the tenuous atmosphere (1% of Earth’s) does not protect from solar radiation.
Seasons. MEDA has observed four, similar to those on Earth, but in Martian conditions. And as on our planet, there are phenomena that mark them, such as storms. “It would be important to be able to predict them in future manned missions,” explains Rodríguez Manfredi. Its prediction will also be important regarding the future landing of the rescue mission of the samples collected by the Perseverance.
Storms. They are local, which usually last up to seven days and with phenomena they call “dust devils”, and global, capable of covering the entire planet for weeks: “Everything is covered as if by a veil of dust that then settles.” The effect is similar to that caused by the Sahrawi haze that occasionally covers much of Spain.
Wind. Gusts of 25 and 30 meters per second (about 100 kilometers per hour) have been recorded. But Mars brings a surprise regarding the perception of streaks. “If you were on Mars and you could take off your helmet to feel the wind on your face, that gust of kilometers per hour, which here would be quite strong, would be perceived as a small breeze. The atmosphere is very thin and the air is very thin. This means that, although the wind is very strong, the drag capacity is much lower,” explains Rodríguez Manfredi, who uses a terrestrial example to explain it: it is like the rapid movement of an arm in the terrestrial air and in a swimming pool. Resistance is greater in water.
![Image of the usual Martian climate. In the background, Santa Cruz Hill seen from Jezero Crater in an image from April 2021.](https://imagenes.elpais.com/resizer/GeK-MQsgAhe-d0eVQdekfZcKS4E=/414x0/cloudfront-eu-central-1.images.arcpublishing.com/prisa/M5BEQWNHWNG4VL5GUPBGQLMBUM.jpg)
Pressure. That key dust in the Martian atmosphere also determines the pressure. Rodríguez Manfredi explains: “If there is a lot of it, when the sun heats it, it causes the temperature to change and that mass tends to rise, as if they were pulling it up.” It is one of the reasons for the whirlpools, which can become gigantic. “Pressure and temperature follow the daily cycle of sunshine, greatly influenced by the amount of dust and the presence of clouds in the atmosphere,” says Sánchez-Lavega.
Swirls. “They are more abundant on Jezero than anywhere else on Mars and can be very large, exceeding 100 meters in diameter. With MEDA we have been able to characterize not only their general aspects (size and abundance) but also unravel how these vortices work,” says Ricardo Hueso, professor at the Bilbao School of Engineering (BEI) after the publication of results in Nature Geoscience.
The Seville meeting has also served to analyze future strategy. MEDA is part of a complex exploration program that depends on the Perseverance and associated devices. The key to the success of the mission is its survival until a vehicle collects the samples obtained so far. For this reason, the common strategy is to keep all devices safe and avoid scans that put them at risk. The strategy of the Martian meteorological team also has to move in this balance between exploration anxiety, costs and caution.
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