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Science 3 December 2004:
Vol. 306. no. 5702, pp. 1750 - 1753
DOI: 10.1126/science.1104257
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Reports

First Atmospheric Science Results from the Mars Exploration Rovers Mini-TES

Michael D. Smith,1* Michael J. Wolff,2 Mark T. Lemmon,3 Nicole Spanovich,4 Don Banfield,5 Charles J. Budney,6 R. Todd Clancy,2 Amitabha Ghosh,1 Geoffrey A. Landis,7 Peter Smith,4 Barbara Whitney,2 Philip R. Christensen,8 Steven W. Squyres5

Thermal infrared spectra of the martian atmosphere taken by the Miniature Thermal Emission Spectrometer (Mini-TES) were used to determine the atmospheric temperatures in the planetary boundary layer and the column-integrated optical depth of aerosols. Mini-TES observations show the diurnal variation of the martian boundary layer thermal structure, including a near-surface superadiabatic layer during the afternoon and an inversion layer at night. Upward-looking Mini-TES observations show warm and cool parcels of air moving through the Mini-TES field of view on a time scale of 30 seconds. The retrieved dust optical depth shows a downward trend at both sites.

1 NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA.
2 Space Science Institute, Boulder, CO 80301, USA.
3 Texas A&M University, College Station, TX 77843, USA.
4 University of Arizona, Tucson, AZ 85721, USA.
5 Cornell University, Ithaca, NY 14853, USA.
6 Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA 91109, USA.
7 NASA Glenn Research Center, Cleveland, OH 44135, USA.
8 Arizona State University, Tempe, AZ 85287, USA.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: Michael.D.Smith{at}nasa.gov

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