Temperature and composition from the first year of NOMAD observations

We analyzed the NOMAD solar occultation data during the first year of the mission (Mars Year 34) with an innovative approach, after adapting a retrieval scheme used in Earth remote sounding to Mars. We tackled the inversion of vertical profiles of temperature, aerosol properties, water vapor and carbon monoxide, as shown in the figure below. The Mars data during this period include a global dust storm and two regional dust storms. Each of these targets was challenging, and required a careful analysis of different spectral regions, noise sensitivity, and instrument performance, and we are the only team within the NOMAD consortium which supplied vertical profiles with excellent vertical resolution up to about 100 km in all these targets at the same time, and in addition, with a single, consistent, and sequential retrieval method.

These results have been published in a series of papers in Journal of Geophysical Research-Planets, and pave the way for future analysis of the data obtained by NOMAD during later phases of the mission.