PDS: The Planetary Atmospheres Node
Credit JPL/NASA
InSight landed on Mars on November 26, 2018. Although the main goal of the mission was to study the interior, the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure (SEIS) and the Auxiliary Payload Sensor Subsystem (APSS), which included temperature, wind and pressure sensors, provided data to support the analysis and development of this dataset.
Description of the Data This catalog of convective vortex encounters from Sol 1-390 that were detected by InSight on the Martian surface is meant to facilitate dust devil studies. The catalog summarizes key meteorological parameters such as wind speed and direction before the event, peak wind, the duration and magnitude of the pressure excursion and temperatures and solar array data. Additionally, a table of seismic parameters from SEIS is also provided. The catalog is intended as a resource for vortex population studies, and as an index for examining these meteorological events in detail and to assess possible geophysical (seismic or magnetic) signatures. Whereas it is difficult to evaluate ‘anecdotal’ results in small surveys, the large number of events (853 with a pressure drop exceeding 0.8 Pa) included in this catalogue permits robust statistical evaluation.
Documentation - The documentation consists of a description of the data and supporting tables.
References - See The Whirlwinds of Elysium
The data
Downloading the compressed dataset
Citing datasets for publication
R .D. Lorenz, A. Spiga, P. Lognonné, M. Plasman, C. E. Newman and C. Charalambous (2023), The Whirlwinds of Elysium: A Catalog and Meteorological Characteristics of “Dust Devil” Vortices Observed by InSight on Mars, NASA Planetary Data System, http://doi.org/10.17189/71eb-n087.
