Density Fluctuations in the Lower Thermosphere of Mars Retrieved From the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) Aerobraking
Abstract
:1. Introduction
2. Materials and Methods
2.1. Coverage in Parameter Space
- Panel A shows that the aerobraking was interrupted after the first 125 passes during the solar conjunction period that divided the campaign into two distinct phases. Most of the braking took place in the second phase, when the orbital period initially decreased rapidly, then at a slower pace, as the orbit was becoming shorter.
- Except for the walk-in phases when the altitude was lowered gradually, the pericenter altitude (defined with respect to the Mars reference ellipsoid [47]) was between 100 km and 112 km. In the analysis to follow, only passes with pericenter altitudes within this interval are considered.
- The spacecraft passed through the atmosphere mostly in the southern winter hemisphere (Panel B and C). The pericenter moved into the polar region for a significant number of passes, where the atmospheric behavior markedly differs from that at lower latitudes.
- Although the LST covered the entire day, the SZA changed within a more constrained interval, because the Sun remained below the horizon irrespective of the LST in the winter polar region (Panel D).
- The second phase of the aerobraking can further be divided into two parts depending on whether the pericenter was moving southward or northward (Panel B). As can be seen in Panel D, these two parts are symmetric with respect to the evolution of the SZA. However, because of the polar winter, the LST evolved differently.
2.2. Acceleration Measurements
- The effect of angular rates (extracted from the RLG data) on the linear accelerations at the IMU location was removed, to obtain the components of the acceleration of the center of mass.
- The accelerometer biases averaged before and after the aerobraking passes were also removed.
2.3. Processing the Accelerometer Data
2.4. Estimation of the Scale Height
3. Results
3.1. Gravity Wave Activity
3.2. Mean Temperature
4. Discussion and Conclusions
Author Contributions
Funding
Conflicts of Interest
Abbreviations
GCM | General (global) circulation model |
GW | Gravity wave |
IMU | Inertial measurement unit |
LST | Local solar time |
MGS | Mars Global Surveyor |
MRO | Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter |
ODY | Mars Odyssey |
RLG | Ring laser gyroscopes |
SZA | Solar zenith angle |
TGO | Trace Gas Orbiter |
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Jesch, D.; Medvedev, A.S.; Castellini, F.; Yiğit, E.; Hartogh, P. Density Fluctuations in the Lower Thermosphere of Mars Retrieved From the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) Aerobraking. Atmosphere 2019, 10, 620. https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos10100620
Jesch D, Medvedev AS, Castellini F, Yiğit E, Hartogh P. Density Fluctuations in the Lower Thermosphere of Mars Retrieved From the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) Aerobraking. Atmosphere. 2019; 10(10):620. https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos10100620
Chicago/Turabian StyleJesch, David, Alexander S. Medvedev, Francesco Castellini, Erdal Yiğit, and Paul Hartogh. 2019. "Density Fluctuations in the Lower Thermosphere of Mars Retrieved From the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) Aerobraking" Atmosphere 10, no. 10: 620. https://doi.org/10.3390/atmos10100620