31st Annual Meeting of the DPS, October 1999
Session 48. Mars Atmospheres Posters
Poster Group II, Thursday-Friday, October 14, 1999, , Kursaal Center

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[48.07] Early Dust Storm Season Thermal State of the Martian Atmosphere - Latest Results from the Horizon Science Experiment

T.Z. Martin (JPL), J.R. Murphy (NMSU)

The Horizon Science Experiment (HORSE) uses the Mars Horizon Sensor Assembly on the MGS orbiter to measure 15 micrometer band thermal emission from the middle Martian atmosphere. Since mapping began in March 1999, data acquisition has been continuous, with 12 orbits/day providing rapid longitudinal coverage. The instrument's four quadrants aligned orthogonally on the Martian limb provide important coverage in local time; two quadrants fore and aft give redundant sampling of the ground track, while the other two sample +/- 1.4 hrs in local time at the equator. Equator crossing is nominally at 3 AM and 3 PM. This coverage of six local times per day for most of the planet means that the MHSA is well suited to detect diurnal temperature variations, including the semidiurnal tidal mode, which is particularly sensitive to the presence of atmospheric dust. We report recent results on the global thermal state; specific dust events; diurnal behavior; and other wavelike phenomena.


The author(s) of this abstract have provided an email address for comments about the abstract: tzmartin@pop.jpl.nasa.gov

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