EGU2020-12178
https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-12178
EGU General Assembly 2020
© Author(s) 2022. This work is distributed under
the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 License.

Aeolian Changes at the Insight Landing Site on Mars: Multi-instrument Observations

Constantinos Charalambous1, Mariah Baker, Matthew Golombek, John McClean, Tom Pike, Aymeric Spiga, Alexander Stott, Veronique Ansan, Catherine Weitz, John Grant, Nicholas Warner, Sebastien Rodriguez, Ralph Lorenz, Anna Mittelholz, Catherine Johnson, Justin Maki, Mark Lemmon, Maria Banks, Naomi Murdoch, Ingrid Daubar, and the Co-authors*
Constantinos Charalambous et al.
  • 1Imperial College London, Electrical and Electronic Engineering, London, United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland (constantinos.charalambous@imperial.ac.uk)
  • *A full list of authors appears at the end of the abstract

The InSight (Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) mission landed in western Elysium Planitia on November 26, 2018. Because of its stationary position and a multi-instrument package, InSight offers the unique opportunity of detecting changes induced by aeolian activity and constraining the atmospheric conditions responsible for particle motion.

In this work, we present the most significant changes from aeolian activity as detected by the InSight lander during its first 400 Martian days of operations. We will show that particle entrainment by wind activity around InSight is a subtle process and report simultaneous measurements observed across multiple instruments. The changes observed are episodic and are seen correlated with excursions in both seismic and magnetic signals, which will be discussed further. Our observations show that all aeolian movements are consistent with the passage of deep convective vortices between noon to 3 pm local time. These vortices may be the primary initiators for aeolian transportation at InSight, inducing episodic particulate motion of grains up to 3 mm in diameter.

Co-authors:

Claire Newman, Kevin Lewis, Donald Banfield, Nathan Williams, Ernst Hauber, Antoine Lucas, Clément Perrin, Jorge Pla-García, Daniel Moreiras, Philippe Lognonné and Bruce Banerdt

How to cite: Charalambous, C., Baker, M., Golombek, M., McClean, J., Pike, T., Spiga, A., Stott, A., Ansan, V., Weitz, C., Grant, J., Warner, N., Rodriguez, S., Lorenz, R., Mittelholz, A., Johnson, C., Maki, J., Lemmon, M., Banks, M., Murdoch, N., and Daubar, I. and the Co-authors: Aeolian Changes at the Insight Landing Site on Mars: Multi-instrument Observations, EGU General Assembly 2020, Online, 4–8 May 2020, EGU2020-12178, https://doi.org/10.5194/egusphere-egu2020-12178, 2020.

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