The Mars Odyssey Accelerometer Thermospheric Experiment: Conditions at the North Winter Pole and on the Nightside of Mars

Details The Mars Odyssey Accelerometer Thermospheric Experiment: Conditions at the North Winter Pole and on the Nightside of Mars The Mars Odyssey Accelerometer Thermospheric Experiment: Conditions at the North Winter Pole and on the Nightside of Mars

Apr 2003

adsabs.harvard.edu/cgi-bin/nph-data_query?bibcode=2003eaeja.....1763k&link_type=abstract

EGS - AGU - EUG Joint Assembly, Abstracts from the meeting held in Nice, France, 6 - 11 April 2003, abstract #1763

Computer Science

Scientific paper

The Mars Odyssey 2001 (M01) Spacecraft was placed into orbit about Mars in September 2001. Aerobraking was performed from then until January 2002 to circularize the M01 orbit. The spacecraft carried triaxial accelerometers, which were used to safely perform aerobraking and to continue exploration of the detailed properties of the upper atmosphere, which had begun with the Mars Global Surveyor accelerometer measurements. The accelerometers were used to measure atmospheric density, and from the vertical structures measured on both inbound and outbound trajectories the scale height, temperature and pressure were determined. Altogether 600 vertical structures were obtained ranging from 95 km to above 170 km. Measurements were obtained for the first time near the North Pole and also the first measurements were obtained on the nightside in the Northern Hemisphere. Temperatures near 110 km were discovered to unexpectedly increase with latitude maximizing near the North winter pole, apparently due to dynamical heating (Keating, et al., 2002). This result is contrary to the MarsGram and MTGCM models used for Odyssey aerobraking, where model temperatures are predicted to minimize near the winter pole. For example, maximum temperatures near the North winter pole at 100 km were observed to be near 200 K while MTGCM temperatures were predicted to be near 100 K. However, a winter polar warming is predicted by the European Mars GCM (Forget, et al., 1999). Asymmetries between conditions at the North winter pole and South winter pole are also discussed. Data analysis has also provided the first thermospheric measurements in the Northern Hemisphere of planetary-scale waves on the nightside of Mars. Planetary-scale waves 1, 2, and 3 were detected from near the equator to high latitudes. The waves are compared with planetary-scale waves measured in the same season on the dayside by the Mars Global Surveyor (MGS) Accelerometer Experiment. The changes in phase from day to night appear to result from the interaction of tides with Martian topography.

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