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winds on mars can both help and hurt

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spacecraft so we're getting really

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creative in how to study winds on the

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surface of mars over a large region

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[Music]

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we're here at nasa's jet propulsion

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laboratory in the space flight

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operations facility also known as the

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dark room this is where engineers send

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commands and receive data from jpl

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missions including nasa's mars

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reconnaissance orbiter now detailed

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images from the orbiter are helping

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scientists better understand martian

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winds

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leslie tamperi is mro's deputy project

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scientist leslie what are we seeing in

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these images so what you can see here

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are dark patches on the surface of the

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ice near the south polar region and

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they're created by gas jets that come

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from under that ice up through cracks

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and deliver that dust out onto the ice

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and the wind will carry that dust and

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lay it on the surface forming these fans

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and what we can do with this information

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is we can look at the directions and the

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sizes

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and we can try to understand what the

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wind field is doing and i understand

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that volunteers played a large role in

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this research yes they did we have taken

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about 75 000 images over all of mars

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with our mro highrise camera we used

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citizen scientists 80 000 volunteers to

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map these fans and map their directions

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and sizes

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why is it important to study wind

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direction on mars some of our landers

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and rovers have had wind measurements

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but only in a few locations at a few

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different times but winds are very

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important for understanding today's

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climate on mars but also for trying to

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understand how the climate was different

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in the past we also have huge dust

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storms that occur on mars sometimes but

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we don't understand why some storms

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become global and some don't so we're

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trying to understand the wind field to

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try to put all these pieces together to

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understand mars better and how does that

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information help protect nasa's

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spacecraft right it's very important for

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not only spacecraft but probably future

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human exploration as well because dust

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it can be dangerous to hardware

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for example on the perseverance rover

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we're fortunate enough to have a wind

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sensor and we're measuring dust devils

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and a couple of these dust devils and

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wind events were so large they picked up

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not only dust but bigger particles sand

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sized particles and in fact some of the

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wind sensors were damaged on the

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perseverance rover in other locations we

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see hardly any dust devils for example

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the inside lander has solar panels the

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solar panels are completely covered with

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dust and so the power is waning and we'd

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really like to see some dust devils

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coming by so that they could clean off

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those solar panels and provide insight

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with some more power

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so learning about the winds and the

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different environments and how they

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change across mars will really help us

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plan not only for the conditions for

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today's spacecraft there but also plan

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better for the future thank you leslie

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to get the latest updates follow at nasa

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jpl and at nasa mars on social media or

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take a deeper dive on the mission