Mars

Profiling Near-Surface Winds On Mars Using Attitude Data From Mars 2020 Ingenuity

By Keith Cowing

Status Report

astro-ph.EP

October 29, 2024

Filed under aerodynamics, atmosphere, cartography, drone, helicopter, Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, Mapping, Mars, MEDA, meteorology, Perseverance Rover, UAV, windspeed

Profiling Near-Surface Winds On Mars Using Attitude Data From Mars 2020 Ingenuity — Location of flight 59 with an inset at the upper right showing the larger context, with north pointing forward into the distance along the surface in oblique panel and up in the inset. For flight 59, Ingenuity took off from a point northwest from Perseverance at a distance of about 378 m. The long white strand in the larger, oblique view shows the flight path toward the take-off point for flight 61. — astro-ph.EP

We used attitude data from the Mars Ingenuity helicopter with a simple steady-state model to estimate windspeeds and directions at altitudes of 3 meters up to 24 meters, the first time winds at such altitudes have been probed on Mars.

We compared our estimates to concurrent wind data at 1.5 m height from the meteorology package MEDA onboard the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover and to predictions from meteorological models. Wind directions inferred from the Ingenuity data agreed to within uncertainties with the directions measured by MEDA, when the latter were available, but deviated from model-predicted directions by as much as 180 deg in some cases.

Also, the inferred windspeeds are often much higher than expected. For example, meteorological predictions tailored to the time and location of Ingenuity’s 59th flight suggest Ingenuity should not have seen windspeeds above about 15 m/s, but we inferred speeds reaching nearly 25 m/s. By contrast, the 61st flight was at a similar time and season and showed weaker winds then the 59th flight, suggesting winds shaped by transient phenomena.

For flights during which we have MEDA data to compare to, inferred windspeeds imply friction velocities exceeding 1 m/s and roughness lengths of more than 10 cm based on a boundary layer model that incorporates convective instability, which seem implausibly large. These results suggest Ingenuity was probing winds sensitive to aerodynamic conditions hundreds of meters upwind instead of the conditions very near Mars 2020, but they may also reflect a need for updated boundary layer wind models.

An improved model for Ingenuity’s aerodynamic response that includes the effects of transient winds may also modify our results. In any case, the work here provides a foundation for exploration of planetary boundary layers using drones and suggests important future avenues for research and development.

Brian Jackson, Lori Fenton, Travis Brown, Asier Munguira, German Martinez, Claire Newman, Daniel Viúdez-Moreiras, Matthew Golombek, Ralph Lorenz, Mark D. Paton, Dylan Conway

Comments: Accepted by PSJ
Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM)
Cite as: arXiv:2410.19132 [astro-ph.EP](or arXiv:2410.19132v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
https://doi.org/10.48550/arXiv.2410.19132
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Submission history
From: Brian Jackson
[v1] Thu, 24 Oct 2024 20:01:59 UTC (14,122 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/2410.19132
Astrobiology,

Keith Cowing

Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Station Payload manager/space biologist, Away Teams, Journalist, Lapsed climber, Synaesthete, Na’Vi-Jedi-Freman-Buddhist-mix, ASL, Devon Island and Everest Base Camp veteran, (he/him) 🖖🏻

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