Dust Deposition at Zhurong Landing Site From Multispectral Camera Observations

Dust deposition is one of the most predominant processes occurring on Mars. Until now, just a few in situ observations have been conducted to investigate the Martian dust. The Multispectral Camera (MSCam) onboard the Zhurong rover with its calibration target can be used to monitor dust deposition, providing a new ground observation. In this work, we focused on the observations of the MSCam calibration target to retrieve atmospheric optical depth and dust deposition rate over the first 300 sols. The derived atmospheric optical depths are around 0.44, suggesting relatively low airborne dust. The estimated dust deposition rate reveals a distinctive deposition process compared with that of other rovers or landers. Notably, no evident dust is presented during the initial 110 sols, after which dust starts to accumulate. Combining in situ meteorological measurements and numerical modeling, wind speed could be a critical factor to control the dust deposition rate.

Automated summary

This study focused on using the Multispectral Camera on the Zhurong rover to investigate atmospheric optical depth and dust deposition rate on Mars, and discovered a distinctive deposition process compared to other rovers or landers.