Vortex‐Dominated Aeolian Activity at Insight's Landing Site, Part 1
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RESEARCH ARTICLE Vortex-Dominated Aeolian Activity at InSight's Landing 10.1029/2020JE006757 Site, Part 1: Multi-Instrument Observations, Analysis, Special Section: and Implications InSight at Mars C. Charalambous1 , J. B. McClean2 , M. Baker3 , W. T. Pike1, M. Golombek4 , 5 6 7 8,9 10 11 Key Points: M. Lemmon , V. Ansan , C. Perrin , A. Spiga , R. D. Lorenz , M. E. Banks , 12 6 13 14 15 • Aeolian activity at InSight N. Murdoch , S. Rodriguez , C. M. Weitz , J. A. Grant , N. H. Warner , 10 16 17 1 18,19 is observed using imaging, J. Garvin , I. J. Daubar , E. Hauber , A. E. Stott , C. L. Johnson , meteorological, seismological, and A. Mittelholz20 , T. Warren21, S. Navarro22 , L. M. Sotomayor22 , J. Maki4 , A. Lucas7 , magnetic field measurements for the D. Banfield23 , C. Newman24 , D. Viúdez-Moreiras22 , J. Pla-García22 , P. Lognonné7 , and first time on Mars 4 • Infrequent episodes of creep, W. B. Banerdt dust removal, saltation, and track 1Department of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, South Kensington Campus, Imperial College London, formation coincide with passage 2 3 of convective vortices in early London, UK, Now at MIT Haystack Observatory, Westford, MA, USA, Morton K. Blaustein Department of Earth afternoon and Planetary Sciences, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, MD, USA, 4Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California • Paucity of observations of saltation Institute of Technology, Pasadena, CA, USA, 5Space Science Institute, Boulder, CO, USA, 6Laboratoire de Planétologie coupled with the bright appearance et Géodynamique, UMR 6112-CNRS, Université de Nantes, Nantes Cedex 3, France, 7Institut de physique du globe of dust-coated surfaces suggests 8 surface stability around InSight de Paris, CNRS, Université de Paris, Paris, France, Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique/Institut Pierre-Simon Laplace, Sorbonne Université, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, École Polytechnique, École Normale´ Supérieure, Campus Pierre et Marie Curie BC99, Paris, France, 9Institut Universitaire de France, Paris, France, 10Johns Supporting Information: Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, Laurel, MD, USA, 11NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA, Supporting Information may be found 12Institut Supérieur de l'Aéronautique et de l'Espace (ISAE-SUPAERO), Toulouse, France, 13Planetary Science Institute, in the online version of this article. Tucson, AZ, USA, 14Center for Earth and Planetary Studies, National Air and Space Museum, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, USA, 15Department of Geological Sciences, State University of New York at Geneseo, 1 College Circle, Correspondence to: Geneseo, NY, USA, 16Department of Earth, Environmental, and Planetary Sciences, Brown University, Providence, RI, C. Charalambous, USA, 17German Aerospace Center, Institute of Planetary Research, Berlin, Germany, 18Department of Earth, Ocean and constantinos.charalambous@imperial. Atmospheric Sciences, University of British Columbia, Vancouver, BC, Canada, 19Planetary Science Institute, Tucson, ac.uk AZ, USA, 20Institute of Geophysics, ETH Zürich, Zürich, Switzerland, 21Department of Physics, University of Oxford, Oxford, UK, 22Centro de Astrobiologíca (CSIC-INTA), Madrid, Spain, 23Cornell Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Citation: Science, Cornell University, Ithaca, NY, USA, 24Aeolis Research, Chandler, AZ, USA Charalambous, C., McClean, J. B., Baker, M., Pike, W. T., Golombek, M., Lemmon, M., et al. (2021). Vortex- We report the aeolian changes observed in situ by NASA's InSight lander during the first dominated aeolian activity at InSight's Abstract landing site, Part 1: Multi-instrument 400 sols of operations: Granule creep, saltation, dust removal, and the formation of dark surface tracks. observations, analysis, and implications. Aeolian changes are infrequent and sporadic. However, on sols, when they do occur, they consistently Journal of Geophysical Research: appear between noon to 3 p.m., and are associated with the passage of convective vortices during periods Planets, 126, e2020JE006757. https:// doi.org/10.1029/2020JE006757 of high vortex activity. Aeolian changes are more frequent at elevated locations, such as the top surfaces of rocks and lander footpads. InSight observed these changes using, for the first time, simultaneous in- Received 30 OCT 2020 situ and orbital imaging and high-frequency meteorological, seismological, and magnetic measurements. Accepted 29 MAR 2021 Seismometer measurements of ground acceleration constrain the timing and trajectory of convective vortex encounters, linking surface changes to source vortices. Magnetometer measurements show perturbations in magnetic field strength during the passage of convective vortices consistent with charged- particle motion. Detachment of sand-scale particles occurs when high background winds and vortex- induced turbulence provide a peak surface friction wind speed above the classic saltation fluid threshold. However, detachment of dust- and granule-scale particles also occurred when the surface friction wind speed remained below this threshold. This may be explained by local enhancement of the surface roughness and other effects described here and further studied in Part 2 (Baker et al., 2021). The lack of saltation and bright dust-coated surfaces at the InSight landing site implies surface stability and the onset of particle motion may be suppressed by dust “cushioning.” This differentiates the InSight landing site © 2021. The Authors. from other areas on Mars that exhibit more aeolian activity. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Aeolian activity, the movement of dust and sand by the wind, is Attribution License, which permits use, Plain Language Summary distribution and reproduction in any common on Earth and has been observed on other planets, including Mars. A new Mars lander, InSight, medium, provided the original work is has for the first time monitored aeolian changes by combining imaging with weather, seismic and properly cited. CHARALAMBOUS ET AL. 1 of 51 Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets 10.1029/2020JE006757 magnetic field measurements. Sand grains are seen moving along the ground and dust is lifted from both artificial and natural surfaces. We found these changes were rare, but almost always happened in the early afternoon when tornado-like phenomena, called convective vortices, passed by the lander, sometimes leaving dark surface trails behind. The combination of the background wind speed and the rotational wind speed within a vortex was likely to be high enough to detach particles from the surface and set them into motion. When these vortices passed by the lander, the seismometer detected the ground tilting, and there was a pulse in the magnetic field, indicating charged particles were part of these dust-clearing events. 1. Introduction Wind is one of the most important geomorphological agents on present-day Mars (Bridges & Ehlmann, 2018; Bridges, Ayoub et al., 2012; Bridges, Bourke et al., 2012; Lapotre & Rampe, 2018). Evidence of aeolian ac- tivity includes the migration of dunes, ripples, wind streaks, and sediment-filled impact craters (Bridges & Ehlmann, 2018). Dust particles can enter into long-term suspension in the form of global dust storms, influ- encing weather and climate through changes in the radiative balance (Gierasch & Goody, 1972; Madeleine et al., 2011). Dust deposition on solar arrays reduces power output, and wind-blown surface material poses potential risks that can hinder the performance of and damage instruments, presenting a hazard to future human exploration (Hecht et al., 2017; Levine et al., 2018). The role that wind-driven processes play in the geomorphology of Mars is complex and only partially under- stood, in particular, the mechanism of aeolian transport and the initiation and sustenance of particle mo- tion (Kok et al., 2012). Aeolian change is initiated when a particle from a mobile sediment source detaches from the surface due to a surface friction wind speed u* above the fluid threshold u*t. Particle detachment is the prerequisite to any subsequent motion: creep (grains continuously coupled to the surface), reptation (low-energy hopping particles), saltation (particle lofting followed by re-impact(s)), and suspension. Once particle entrainment is initiated, particle motion in sand-laden wind can be maintained as long as the sur- face friction wind speed exceeds the impact threshold u*i (Almeida et al., 2008; Bagnold, 1941; Kok, 2010a). This threshold is controlled by both the horizontal drag force imparted by the wind and the momentum transferred to the particle bed by impacts of saltating grains (Bagnold, 1941; Kok et al., 2012). Due to the low density of Mars' atmosphere, the fluid threshold surface friction of wind speed is higher than on Earth (Bagnold, 1941; Iversen & White, 1982; Newman et al., 2002). The surface friction wind speed predicted by atmospheric models and measured on the surface rarely exceeds this higher fluid thresh- old (Bridges et al., 2017; Kok et al., 2012; Newman et al., 2017), yet aeolian features and dust suspen- sion are observed under present-day Martian atmospheric conditions (Bridges, Ayoub et al., 2012; Bridges, Bourke et al., 2012; Ewing et al., 2017; Greeley, Balme, et al., 2003; Greeley, Kuzmin, et al., 2003; Lapotre et al., 2016, 2018; Silvestro et al., 2010; Sullivan et al., 2008, 2005). Images acquired from landed cameras have captured in-situ evidence of aeolian activity on Mars, both with- in disturbed piles and natural