We found a match
Your institution may have access to this item. Find your institution then sign in to continue.
- Title
First results from the InSight FluxGate Magnetometer: Constraints on Mars' crustal magnetic field at the landing site.
- Authors
Mittelholz, Anna; Johnson, Catherine L.; Langlais, Benoit; Lognonne, Philippe; Pike, William T.; Joy, Steven P.; Russell, Christopher T.; Yu, Yanan; Ansan, Veronique; Grott, Matthias; Krause, Christian; Spohn, Tilman; Widmer-Schnidrig, Rudolf; Smrekar, Suzanne E.; Banerdt, William B.
- Abstract
The Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport (InSight)mission successfully landed on Mars on 26 November, 2018 at 4.50∘N, 135.62∘E in ElysiumPlanitia. The Insight FluxGate magnetometer (IFG) is part of the Auxiliary Payload SensorSuite (APSS) of instruments that will monitor environmental conditions at the lander, for theprimary purpose of accounting for sources of wind, temperature, pressure and magnetic fieldnoise in the seismic data. The IFG is the first magnetometer to be deployed on thesurface of Mars, and thus affords unique opportunities for magnetic field-basedstudies of the martian interior, the ionosphere, and the extent to which conditions inthe solar wind affect the martian surface environment. In this, and a companionpaper (Russell et et al., 2019), we report on initial results from the IFG instrument.Here, we focus on approaches for estimating the local crustal magnetic field at theInSight lander, yielding the first surface-based estimates of Mars’ crustal magneticfield. We use two approaches to estimate the local crustal field: (1) In theory, IFG data canprovide a direct estimate of the crustal field via the DC field. However, such estimates requireaccurate characterization of the DC spacecraft field, with instruments in their deck and/ordeployed configurations. Characterization of spacecraft fields prior to landing provideestimates for the magnitude of the spacecraft field of ∼700 nT. (2) Vibrations ofthe InSight lander in response to the daily winds have been recorded by the ShortPeriod sensors of the seismic experiment SEIS. These high frequency tilts resultin accelerations and magnetic field perturbations that may be detectable on theshort-period seismometer, SP, and the IFG respectively. Calculations based on Viking dataprior to InSight ground operations, suggested that wind speeds of at least 10 m/sexpected at the InSight landing site, would produce lander tilts of ∼ 10−4 degrees.These in turn could produce magnetic field perturbations on the IFG resolvable with∼20 hrs of data. Measurement of the horizontal signals on SP and the horizontalperturbations to the magnetic field in the resonance frequency band of the landerallow a least squares solution for the vertical component, BZ, of the ambient crustalmagnetic field. Accordingly, over 40 hours of simultaneous IFG and SP data havebeen collected while the SP is on deck and we will report on results from thesedata.
- Subjects
FLUXGATE magnetometers; MAGNETIC fields; MARTIAN surface; MARS (Planet); MAGNETIC resonance; IONOSPHERE; SATELLITE geodesy
- Publication
Geophysical Research Abstracts, 2019, Vol 21, p1
- ISSN
1029-7006
- Publication type
Article