Mars Wind Currents Reveal a Surprising Feature - Animations
Released on December 12, 2019
MAVEN is the first spacecraft specifically designed to study the Mars upper atmosphere, in order to better understand the evolution of its climate. Now, scientists have analyzed several years of data from MAVEN’s NGIMS instrument and produced the first map of wind currents in the Martian thermosphere (a layer of the upper atmosphere). This map led to an unexpected and surprising discovery – disturbances in high-altitude wind currents on Mars are caused by terrain features such as mountains and valleys on the planet’s surface.
GCMD keywords can be found on the Internet with the following citation:
Olsen, L.M., G. Major, K. Shein, J. Scialdone, S. Ritz, T. Stevens, M. Morahan, A. Aleman, R. Vogel, S. Leicester, H. Weir, M. Meaux, S. Grebas, C.Solomon, M. Holland, T. Northcutt, R. A. Restrepo, R. Bilodeau, 2013. NASA/Global Change Master Directory (GCMD) Earth Science Keywords. Version 8.0.0.0.0