The DREAMS experiment flown on the ExoMars 2016 mission for the study of Martian environment during the dust storm season

Carlo Bettanini (1) , Francesca Esposito (2) , Stefano Debei (1) , Ceasare Molfese (2) , Giacomo Colombatti (1) , Alessio Aboudan (1) , John Robert Brucato (3) , Fausto Cortecchia (2) , Gaetano Di Achille (2) , Gian Paolo Guizzo (1) , Enrico Friso (1) , Francesca Ferri (1) , Laurent Marty (2) , Vito Mennella (2) , Roberto Molinaro (2) , Pietro Schipani (2) , Simone Silvestro (2) , Raffaele Mugnuolo (4) , Simone Pirrotta (4) , E. Marchetti (4) , Ari-Matti Harri (5) , Franck Montmessin (6) , Colin F. Wilson (7) , Ignacio Arruego Rodríguez (8) , Sadok Abbaki (9) , Victor Apestigue (8) , G. Bellucci (10) , Jean-Jacques Berthelier (6) , S. B. Calcutt (11) , François Forget (12) , M. Genzer (5) , Pierre Gilbert (9) , H. Haukka (5) , J. J. Jiménez (8) , S. Jiménez (13) , J-L. Josset (14) , O. Karatekin (15) , G. Landis (16) , R. Lorenz (17) , J. Martinez (8) , D. Möhlmann (18) , David Moirin (9) , Ernesto Palomba (10) , M. Pateli (11) , Jean-Pierre Pommereau (6) , C. I. Popa (19) , Scot Rafkin (20) , Pascal Rannou (21) , Nilton O. Renno (22) , W. Schmidt (5) , Fernando Simões (23) , Aymeric Spiga (12) , Francisco Valero (24) , L. Vázquez (24) , Francis Vivat (9) , Olivier Witasse (25)

1 CISAS - Centro di Ateneo di Studi e Attività Spaziali “Giuseppe Colombo”
2 OAC - INAF - Osservatorio Astronomico di Capodimonte
3 OAA - INAF - Osservatorio Astrofisico di Arcetri
4 ASI - Agenzia Spaziale Italiana
5 FMI - Finnish Meteorological Institute
6 PLANETO - LATMOS
7 Clarendon Laboratory [Oxford]
8 INTA - Instituto Nacional de Técnica Aeroespacial
9 LATMOS - Laboratoire Atmosphères, Milieux, Observations Spatiales
10 IFSI - Istituto di Fisica dello Spazio Interplanetario
11 University of Oxford
12 LMD - Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique (UMR 8539)
13 UPM - Universidad Politécnica de Madrid
14 SPACE - X - Space Exploration Institute [Neuchâtel]
15 ROB - Royal Observatory of Belgium [Brussels]
16 NASA Glenn Research Center
17 APL - Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory [Laurel, MD]
18 DLR Institut für Planetenforschung
19 OU - The Open University [Milton Keynes]
20 SwRI - Southwest Research Institute [Boulder]
21 GSMA - Groupe de spectrométrie moléculaire et atmosphérique
22 SPRL - Space Physics Research Laboratory [Ann Arbor]
23 GSFC - NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
24 UCM - Universidad Complutense de Madrid = Complutense University of Madrid [Madrid]
25 ESTEC - European Space Research and Technology Centre

The DREAMS (Dust characterization, Risk assessment and Environment Analyser on the Martian Surface) experiment on Schiaparelli lander of ExoMars 2016 mission was an autonomous meteorological station designed to completely characterize the Martian atmosphere on surface, acquiring data not only on temperature, pressure, humidity, wind speed and direction, but also on solar irradiance, dust opacity and atmospheric electrification, to measure for the first time key parameters linked to hazard conditions for future manned explorations. Although with very limited mass and energy resources, DREAMS would be able to operate autonomously for at least two Martian days (sols) after landing in a very harsh environment as it was supposed to land on Mars during the dust storm season (October 2016 in Meridiani Planum) relying on its own power supply. ExoMars mission was successfully launched on 14th March 2016 and Schiaparelli entered the Mars atmosphere on October 20th beginning its ‘six minutes of terror’ journey to the surface. Unfortunately, some unexpected behavior during the parachuted descent caused an unrecoverable critical condition in navigation system of the lander driving to a destructive crash on the surface. The adverse sequence of events at 4 km altitude triggered the transition of the lander in surface operative mode, commanding switch on the DREAMS instrument, which was therefore able to correctly power on and send back housekeeping data. This proved the nominal performance of all DREAMS hardware before touchdown demonstrating the highest TRL of the unit for future missions. This paper describes this experiment in terms of scientific goals, design, performances, testing and operational capabilities with an overview of in flight performances and available mission data.

Keywords: meteorological measurements; dust storm; Mars; atmospheric electric phenomena; ExoMars mission; autonomous instrument

Domains: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics [astro-ph.EP]; Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysic [astro-ph.IM]; Solar and Stellar Astrophysics [astro-ph.SR]

Carlo Bettanini, Francesca Esposito, Stefano Debei, Ceasare Molfese, Giacomo Colombatti, et al.. The DREAMS experiment flown on the ExoMars 2016 mission for the study of Martian environment during the dust storm season. 2017 IEEE International Workshop on Metrology for AeroSpace (MetroAeroSpace), Jun 2017, Padua, Italy. pp.249-255, ⟨10.1109/MetroAeroSpace.2017.7999574⟩. ⟨insu-01573505⟩