One Martian Year of Observations by the Emirates eXploration Imager (EXI): Operations Summary, Current Status, and Seasonal Trends in the Diurnal Behavior of Water Ice Clouds

The EXI instrument onboard the Emirates Mars Mission (EMM) spacecraft has been operating for a full Martian year.  Using the elliptical orbit, EXI has observed the atmosphere and surface of Mars at both regional and global scales while providing a unique diurnal sampling.  This diurnal coverage is available over much of the planet on a time scale of approximately ten days.  The observations are typically taken in both the ultraviolet and visible: 260, 320, 437, 546, and 635 nm, with an effective spatial resolution of 2–4 km per native pixel.  This presentation will provide an overview of EXI’s on-orbit activities and performance during the first Mars year of science operations, a summary of the diurnal behavior of seasonal trends in water ice clouds, and some examples of the combined analysis of EXI and Emirates Mars InfraRed Spectrometer (EMIRS) observations.  More specifically, we will cover the following:

 

• The multiple types of observational modes employed, statistics of the images obtained and available in the EMM Science Data Center, and the radiometric performance of the camera as measured by the standard star observation program.

 

• The diurnal trends are associated with the seasonal behavior of water ice clouds through a Martian year, including the aphelion and perihelion seasons.

 

• The advantages and challenges of combining the EXI and EMIRS observations for atmospheric and surface studies, where the Instantaneous Field of View differs by one-to-two orders of magnitude.

 

Funding for the development of the EMM mission was provided by the UAE government and to co-authors outside of the UAE by the Mohammed bin Rashid Space Center (MBRSC).