Thermal structure and dust clouds during the 2018 dust storm from ACS-TIRVIM onboard ExoMars/TGO
Résumé
The ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO), a mission by ESA and Roscosmos started its operational scientific phase in March 2018. The Atmospheric Chemistry Suite (ACS) is a set of three spectrometers (NIR, MIR, and TIRVIM) designed to observe the Martian atmosphere in solar occultation, nadir and limb geometry. The thermal infrared channel — TIRVIM is a Fourier-transform spectrometer covering the spectral range of 1.7-17 μm with a spectral resolution of 0.8 cm-1 for nadir observations. In nadir operation mode, the primary goal of TIRVIM is the long-term monitoring of atmospheric temperature and aerosol (dust and ice clouds) state from the surface up to approximately 60 km. In June 2018 a global dust storm enshrouded Mars for more than a month. We present the evolution of the thermal structure, dust content and optical properties during this period. Acknowledgements ExoMars is the space mission of ESA and Roscosmos. The ACS experiment is led by IKI Space Research Institute in Moscow. The project acknowledges funding by Roscosmos and CNES. Science operations of ACS are funded by Roscosmos and ESA.