Hunting for Methane on Mars: one Martian year of survey with ACS on TGO

Franck Montmessin (1) , Oleg Korablev (2) , Anna A. Fedorova (2) , Alexander V. Trokhimovskiy (2) , Franck Lefèvre (1) , Lucio Baggio (1) , Denis A. Belyaev (2) , Kevin Olsen (3) , Juan Alday (3) , Abdanour Irbah (1) , Gaetan Lacombe (1) , Andrey Patrakeev (2) , Lucas Teinturier (4, 5) , Nikolay Ignatiev (2) , Mikhail Luginin (2) , Alexey Shakun (2) , Sandrine Guerlet (6) , François Forget (6) , Ehouarn Millour (6) , Colin F. Wilson (3)

1 PLANETO - LATMOS
2 IKI - Space Research Institute of the Russian Academy of Sciences
3 Department of Physics [Oxford]
4 McGill University = Université McGill [Montréal, Canada]
5 LATMOS - Laboratoire Atmosphères, Milieux, Observations Spatiales
6 LMD - Laboratoire de Météorologie Dynamique (UMR 8539)

The Atmospheric Chemistry Suite (ACS) [1], one of the four science experiments on board ESA-Roscosmos ExoMars 2016 Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) mission has started science operations in March 2018. ACS consists of 3 infrared spectrometers targeting the unambiguous detection of trace gases of potential geophysical or biological interest. The dataset reported here concerns the methane detection attempts conducted during the first complete Martian year (almost two Earth years) of observations using ultra-sensitive occultation observing mode in orbit around Mars.

Domaines: Planète et Univers [physics]

Franck Montmessin, Oleg Korablev, Anna A. Fedorova, Alexander V. Trokhimovskiy, Franck Lefèvre, et al.. Hunting for Methane on Mars: one Martian year of survey with ACS on TGO. Europlanet Science Congress 2020. EPSC 2020, Sep 2020, Virtual Meeting, Unknown Region. pp.EPSC2020-637, ⟨10.5194/epsc2020-637⟩. ⟨insu-02994808v2⟩