Al-Amal snaps first close-up images of Martian moon Deimos

Deimos with Mars in the background
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During its first close fly-by of the Martian moon Deimos on March 10, 2023, the United Arab Emirates Mars orbiter Al-Amal (“Hope” in English) obtained the first close-up images of the moon.

The picture to the right show Deimos with Mars in the background. The full set of images, compiled into a movie, can be seen by clicking on the image.

The results were outlined by science lead Hessa Al Matroushi at a conference today.

During the 10 March fly-by, the mission team used all three onboard instruments to take readings spanning from the infrared to the extreme ultraviolet. The relatively flat spectrum the scientists saw is suggestive of the type of material seen on Mars’s surface, rather than the carbon-rich rock often found in asteroids, suggesting that Deimos was formed from the same material the planet. “If there were carbon or organics, we would see spikes in specific wavelengths,” she says.

These results probably put an end to the theory that Mars’ moons came from the asteroid belt. Instead, they either formed when the planet did, or were thrown free and settled into orbit after a very large impact, such as the ones that created either the Hellas or Argyre basins, both of which happened several billion years ago and thus provide ample time for the space environment to smooth the moon’s surface and add some craters.

Al-Amal orbiter tracks unusual northern summer dust storm on Mars

Fig. 3 from Al-Amal paper
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Scientists, using UAE’s Al-Amal Mars orbiter, have documented the occurrence of a rare high northern latitude summer dust storm whose origin appears linked to both a major canyon in the northern ice cap as well as the giant sand dune seas that surround that ice cap.

The EMM [instrument on Al-Amal] observed a distinct dust cloud on 10 September 2021. That was outside of the classical Martian dust storm season. The observed dust cloud is an arc-shaped dust storm, typically observed at the northern polar cap edge. This type of non-season dust storm is a well-known phenomenon, but this particular case is interesting because the dust cloud has frontal structure. A large atmospheric front is unusual in this location and season.

EMM’s unique observational coverage adds value to this observation, by providing a sequence of four camera images of the frontal dust cloud, separated by 2–3 hr. The frontal dust cloud shows very little movement over 7–8 hr, that is, it is quasi-stationary. We estimated the wind speed and direction by tracking internal motion of the dust cloud. In one case, the estimated wind is consistent with near-surface easterly winds at the polar cap edge.

The two images to the right are adapted from the paper’s figure 3. The yellow line in the top image indicates the location of the dust storm’s front (about 1,200 miles long), aligned with the canyon Chasma Boreale, marked by the black line, that cuts a 300-mile-long and 4,600-foot-deep gash into the North Pole ice cap.

The storm’s wind speeds were estimated very roughly to be about 16 feet per second, about 10 mph. In Mars’ thin atmosphere these winds would be so gentle that they would be almost imperceptible.

The storm front’s alignment with Chasma Boreale is intriguing, but the overview map below suggests another intriguing alignment.
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Martian auroras as seen by UAE’s Al-Amal orbiter

Aurora types on Mars
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Using data gathered by the Al-Amal orbiter (“Hope” in English), scientists have identified three types of aurora on Mars. The image to the right, figure 1 from their paper, shows these types, crustal field aurora, patchy aurora, and sinuous aurora. From the abstract:

We categorize discrete auroral patterns into three types: those near strong vertical crustal magnetic field, patchy aurora near very weak crustal fields, and a new type we call “sinuous,” an elongated serpentine structure that stretches thousands of kilometers into the nightside from near midnight in the northern hemisphere.

All three types generally occur during the Martian night, and evolve quickly over periods of less than 45 minutes. The first type, which is generally the brightest, forms over terrain where Mars’ residual magnetic field is strongest and vertically oriented, and was most often seen over the southern cratered highlands centered between the large impact basins Argyre and Hellas. The third type, sinuous aurora, was more unusual:

These we are calling “sinuous discrete aurora,” due to their thin, elongated, and sometimes serpentine shapes. They share several key traits: (a) they appear in the northern hemisphere away from strong crustal fields, (b) they usually connect to the dayside in the far north but also sometimes separately at lower latitudes, (c) they extend for thousands of kilometers into the night side, (d) they appear on both dusk and dawn sides, and (e) their shapes change moderately and brightnesses shift by factors of up to two over timescales of ∼20 min (i.e., the time between swaths, as shown in the differences between Figures 1j and 1k [in the figure above).

The existence of aurora on Mars has been known since the 2000s. These observations however are the first that show more details beyond a fuzzy patch.

UAE Al-Amal Mars orbiter finds surprising variations in Mars atmosphere

Oxygen variations in Martian atmosphere
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The United Arab Emirates Al-Amal (“hope” in English) Mars orbiter has discovered unexpected variations of oxygen and carbon monoxide in the Martian atmosphere.

The EMM team had expected to observe a relatively uniform emission from oxygen at 130.4 nm across the planet and yet here we are, faced with unpredicted variations of 50% or more in the brightness.

The image to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, shows the variations in oxygen on Mars’s dayside. Though the map does not indicate the geography below, the concentration of oxygen in the northern latitudes appears to correspond to the planet’s northern lowland plains. In fact, the variations should not have been a surprise, since the surface of Mars has such a stark dichotomy between its northern and southern hemispheres.

Atomic oxygen in Mars’ atmosphere, as seen by Al-Amal

Oxygen distribution on Mars

The UAE’s Al-Amal Mars orbiter on July 19, 2021 released a new spectroscopic image, showing the global distribution of atomic oxygen in the Martian upper atmosphere.

The Emirates Ultraviolet Spectrometer (EMUS) mapped the distribution of atomic oxygen in the planet’s upper atmosphere, showing a dense patch emerging from the nightside into the new day.

The photo to the right, cropped and reduced to post here, shows this.

Over the next two years, covering one single Martian year, Al-Amal will monitor the distribution of this oxygen to see how it fluctuations from season to season, as well as from day to day. Gather this information will help the theorists untangle the past atmospheric history of Mars.