The ExoMars 2016 Trace Gas Orbiter: Recent Results from NOMAD

The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter has been operating around Mars since April 2018, amassing a wealth of knowledge about the atmosphere and surface of the Red Planet. Onboard are two spectrometer suites, NOMAD and ACS, a surface camera, CASSIS, and a neutron detector, FREND.

NOMAD consists of three spectrometers: two observe in the infrared, in the 2-4 µm region, and one observes the 200-650 nm region. The two infrared spectrometers [1] are named “SO”, which is designed for solar occultation observations, and “LNO”, which is primarily designed for nadir observations, but also can measure solar occultations and occasionally observes Phobos. The ultraviolet-visible spectrometer can do all the above: solar occultation, limb, nadir, and Phobos and Deimos observations [2]. At the time of writing all three spectrometers continue to operate nominally.

In this presentation we will give a summary of recent results and ongoing projects within the NOMAD team: results have recently been published looking at dust and aerosol particle sizes [3], water vapour pumping to high altitudes [4], ultraviolet and visible dayglow [5] and nightglow [6]; plus there are upcoming joint observation campaigns with the iSHELL instrument on IRTF, EUVM on MAVEN, and ACS (also on TGO). Also, the climatologies of the principal atmospheric constituents measured by NOMAD are regularly updated - for example ozone, water vapour, carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide (for temperature and pressure retrievals), hydrogen chloride, water ice and CO2 ice clouds.

 

Acknowledgements

The NOMAD experiment is led by the Royal Belgian Institute for Space Aeronomy (IASB-BIRA) with co-PI teams from Spain (IAA-CSIC), Italy (INAF-IAPS) and the United Kingdom (Open University). This project acknowledges funding by: the Belgian Science Policy Office (BELSPO) with the financial and contractual coordination by the ESA Prodex Office (PEA 4000103401, 4000121493, 4000140753, 4000140863); by the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation (MCIU) and European funds (grants PGC2018-101836-B-I00 and ESP2017-87143-R; MINECO/FEDER), from the Severo Ochoa (CEX2021-001131-S) and from MCIN/AEI/10.13039/501100011033 (grants PID2022-137579NB-I00, RTI2018-100920-J-I00 and PID2022-141216NB-I00); by the UK Space Agency (grants ST/V002295/1, ST/V005332/1, ST/X006549/1, ST/Y000234/1 and ST/R003025/1); and by the Italian Space Agency (grant 2018-2-HH.0). This work was supported by the Belgian Fonds de la Recherche Scientifique – FNRS (grant 30442502; ET_HOME).

 

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