Nikolay Ignatiev

Mars is reputed to lack ongoing volcanic activity. However, marsquakes were revealed recently, and clues to volcanism younger than tens of million years have accumulated. While sulfur dioxide, so far undetected, could testify to ongoing eruptive activity, evidence of active magma chambers may be better identified by seepage of halogen gases, such as hydrogen chloride (HCl). Observations by Atmospheric Chemistry Suite led to the widespread observations of HCl at part-per-billion levels in the atmosphere of Mars during the warm perihelion period, attributed to aerosol-atmospheric sources. Here, we report HCl detections during the cold aphelion season that are isolated in the Alba Mons region. We also identify fresh and narrow (<1 meter) fissures in this area, which we interpret to be potential HCl pathways rooted into magmatic bodies at depth. Our results are best explained by ongoing igneous processes in the Martian interior.

The extreme conditions in Venus’s lower atmosphere make robust calibration of in situ observations challenging. Consequently, measurements from past entry probes provided mixed evidence regarding the existence of a near-surface particulate layer (NSPL). Although the Venera 11 (1978) and Venera 13 and 14 (1982) landers performed in situ spectrophotometric observations during descent, the original datasets were later lost. However, a subset has been reconstructed by digitising graphical outputs produced during the missions’ initial data-processing phase [1]. Following careful analysis to identify and mitigate errors and other artefacts, the reconstructed dataset retains the reliable downward-looking spectra acquired by the three landers from ~62 km altitude to the surface.Previous retrievals from the reconstructed Venera 13 indicated an NSPL centred at ~3.5–5 km, with particulate optical properties consistent with a basaltic composition [2]. Following the methodology of [2], we use NEMESIS, a radiative transfer and retrieval code [3], to perform near-surface retrievals from the reconstructed Venera 11 and Venera 14 datasets. The results from Venera 11, 13, and 14 retrievals are compared with reported detections and non-detections from other instruments on earlier in situ missions, to explore potential formation pathways for the NSPL in light of the combined observational record.References:[1] Ignatiev, N. I., Moroz, V. I., Moshkin, B. E., Ekonomov, A. P., Gnedykh, V. I., Grigor’ev, A. V., and Khatuntsev, I. V. Cosmic Research 35(1), 1–14 (1997).[2] Kulkarni, S. V., Irwin, P. G. J., Wilson, C. F., & Ignatiev, N. I. Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets, 130, e2024JE008728, (2025).[3] Irwin, P. G., Teanby, N. A., de Kok, R., Fletcher, L. N., Howett, C. J., Tsang, C. C., Wilson, C. F., Calcutt, S. B., Nixon, C. A., and Parrish, P. D. Journal of Quantitative Spectroscopy and Radiative Transfer 109(6), 1136–1150 (2008).

The SPICAV IR spectrometer aboard the Venus Express orbiter measured spectra of the 1.1 and 1.18 μm atmospheric transparency windows at the Venus night side in 2006–2014. The long-term measurements encompassed the major part of the Venus globe, including polar latitudes. For the first time, the H₂O volume mixing ratio in the deep Venus atmosphere at about 10–16 km has been retrieved for the entire SPICAV IR dataset using a radiative transfer model with multiple scattering. The retrieved H₂O volume mixing ratio is found to be sensitive to different approximations of the H₂O and CO₂ absorption lines’ far wings and assumed surface emissivity. The global average of the H₂O abundance retrieved for different parameters ranges from 23.6 ± 1.0 ppmv to 27.7 ± 1.2 ppmv. The obtained values are consistent with recent studies of water vapor below the cloud layer, showing the H₂O mixing ratio below 30 ppmv. Within the considered dataset, the zonal mean of the H₂O mixing ratio does not vary significantly from 60° S to 75° N, except for a 2 ppmv decrease noted at high latitudes. The H₂O local time distribution is also uniform. The 8-year observation period revealed no significant long-term trends or periodicities.

The SPICAV IR spectrometer on board the Venus Express mission measured spectra of the 1.1- and 1.18-μm atmospheric transparency windows at the Venus night side. The H2O volume mixing ratio in the deep Venus atmosphere at about 10-16 km has been retrieved for the entire SPICAV IR dataset using a radiative transfer model with multiple scattering. One of the challenges in modeling Venus’ night-side thermal emission in transparency windows is the deviation of the far wings of H2O and CO2 absorption lines from the Lorentz profile. Depending on the chosen approach to calculate the H2O absorption, the volume mixing ratio is: 27.1±1.1 ppmv for the Voigt profile, 26.9 ± 1.0 for the semi-empirical MT_CKD water vapor continuum model, 23.6±1.0 ppmv for the super-Lorentzian line profile. The zonal mean of the water vapor VMR do not vary significantly from 60°S to 70°N. Observations of polar latitudes are characterized by the increased noise level and might show a slight H2O mixing ratio decrease of 2 ppmv. No prominent long-term change on the time scale of 8 years nor local time variations of water vapor were detected.

The thick cloud layer enshrouding Venus influences its thermal balance and climate evolution. However, our knowledge of total optical depth, spatial and temporal variations in the clouds is limited. We present the first complete study of the SPICAV IR spectrometer observations in the 1.28- and 1.31-µm atmospheric transparency windows during the Venus Express mission in 2006–2014. The nadir spectra were analyzed with one-dimensional multiple scattering radiative transfer model to obtain the variability of total cloud opacity on the Venus night side. The optical depth recomputed to 1 µm averages 36.7 with a standard deviation of 6.1. Cloud opacity depends on latitude, with a minimum at 50–55° N. In the Southern Hemisphere, this latitude dependence is less pronounced due to the reduced spatial resolution of the experiment, determined by the eccentricity of the spacecraft’s orbit. Cloud opacity exhibits strong variability at short time scales, mostly in the range of 25–50. The variability is more pronounced in the equatorial region. The lack of imaging capability limits the quantitative characterization of the periodicity. No persistent longitude or local time trends were detected.

The Thermal InfraRed channel in honor of professor Vassili Ivanovich Moroz (TIRVIM) of the Atmospheric Chemistry Suite onboard ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter has continuously monitored the Martian atmosphere from 13 March 2018 until 2 December 2019, covering almost a complete Martian Year (MY). In the nadir mode of observations, infrared spectra obtained by TIRVIM in the spectral range 600–1,300 cm⁻¹ permit retrievals of vertical temperature profiles from the surface up to 60 km of altitude, surface temperatures and column aerosol optical depths. Here we report the retrieved atmospheric thermal structure and the column dust content during the global dust storm (GDS) of MY 34 monitored from L_s = 182.2° to L_s = 211.8° (Solar Longitude), capturing the evolution of the GDS and the response of the atmospheric thermal structure to the changing dust loading. The global storm caused asymmetric atmosphere heating, predominantly in the southern hemisphere, and changed diurnal contrast of atmospheric thermal structure. We also observe a reduced diurnal contrast of surface temperatures at the peak of the GDS.

1. Introduction Thermal infrared datasets from planetary bodies have the potential to provide key insights for the understanding of a planet's climate evolution and history: valuable information about composition, temperature and state of the atmosphere can be retrieved from thermal spectral data.In this work, we present the application of a methodology based on Principal Component Analysis (PCA) and Target Transformation (TT) Factor Analysis (FA) techniques to thermal infrared data of the ExoMars2016 Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) with the main goal to retrieve the different particulate atmospheric contributions present in the spectra and separate them from the surface contributions. 2. Instrument and dataset TGO has a suite of spectroscopic instruments for the investigation of the Red Planet in the infrared spectral range known as Atmospheric Chemistry Suite (ACS) [1] consisting of three spectrometers observing Mars in solar occultation, nadir and limb geometry in the Near-InfraRed (NIR), Mid-InfraRed (MIR) and Thermal InfraRed (TIR) spectral channels. Among them, the ACS thermal-infrared channel (TIRVIM) covers the spectral range between 1.7-17 μm with apodized resolution varying from 0.2 to 1.3 cm−1 [1]. TIRVIM has similar capabilities to IRIS (Mariner 9), TES, and PFS in several aspects, but has some advantages: - higher spectral resolution; - better noise equivalent radiance (from 0.08 mW/m2/sr-1/cm-1); - dense spatial coverage (TGO has a circular orbit of 400 km) [1].Martian TIRVIM spectra acquired along the orbits that cross Elysium Planitia, landing site of the NASA’s Insight (Interior exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport) lander, were here analyzed. The selected data orbits span from Ls=150°C to Ls=210°C, covering part of the Martian summer and of the Martian autumn going through the autumn equinox in the northern hemisphere of the planet. Corresponding Local Times cover Martian days and nights. 3. Methodology To analyze the ExoMars TIRVIM data and retrieve and characterize the number of varying atmospheric components present in these data and their spectral shape, a methodology was applied based on a combination of PCA and TT – FA techniques [2, 3]. These techniques are demonstrated to be able to extract the composition of laboratory samples [4, 5]; to extract the principal varying components from a big spectral dataset in the thermal infrared [3], and then to identify them as components of the atmosphere and separate their contribution from surface emission [6]. This methodology, previously successfully adopted for the analysis of TES and PFS data [2, 7], was, here, applied for the first time to the analysis of the new and at higher spectral resolution TIRVIM dataset. Considering that the PCA works best when the different components have significant variation in the data, we selected data where these variations are more likely to occur: the analyzed data cover diurnal as well as seasonal variations.  A list of PFS and TES atmospheric end-members extracted from [3] and [2] were used as initial guess for the TT, to interpret the abstract eigenvectors retrieved from the PCA and attribute them a physically coherent meaning. 4. Results and future developments Spectral shapes of atmospheric dust and water ice aerosols were recovered from the analyzed TIRVIM data. Comparisons with results previously obtained on PFS and TES data (Figure 1) validate the methodology used and show that it is capable of determining the number of independently variable components and recovering the spectral endmembers present in the TIRVIM data. Figure 1.  Comparison between the general TES/PFS extracted endmembers [2, 3] (upper panel) and the endmembers extracted from the TIRVIM data in this work (bottom panel). Grey area: wavelength cut due to high instrumental noise. Deconvolution of the original spectra using the recovered spectral end-members allowed us to obtain the concentration coefficients of the dust and water ice end-members and retrieved abundances maps. The results obtained are promising in terms of identification and separation of the atmospheric components and have strong impact on the identification of surface contributions in the spectra. We are further investigating this point with the main goal of showing the potential of this method to extract valuable information from TIRVIM data not only on the atmosphere, but also on the surface of the Red Planet. Derived surface emissivity products are being analyzed by linear deconvolution analysis with the laboratory spectral database of Martian analogues measured at the Planetary Spectroscopy Laboratory (PSL) of DLR, in Berlin [5]. Acknowledgments ExoMars is a space mission of ESA and Roscosmos. The ACS experiment is led by IKI, the Space Research Institute in Moscow, assisted by LATMOS in France. The science operations of ACS are funded by Roscosmos and ESA.  References [1] Korablev et al. (2018) Space Science Review, 214:7. [2] D’Amore M. et al. (2013) Icarus, 226, 1294-1303. [3] Bandfield J.L., Christensen P.R., Smith M.D. (2000) JGR, 105 (E4), 9573-9587. [4] Smith, M.O., Adams, J.B., Johnson, P.E. (1985) JGR, 90, 797-804. [5] Alemanno G., Maturilli A., D’Amore M., Helbert J. (2021) Icarus, 368. [6] Smith M. D., Bandfield J. L. and Christensen P.R. (2000) JGR, 85 (E4), 9589-9607. [7] Maturilli, A., Helbert, J., D’Amore, M. (2009) EPSC2009, Abstract #EPSC2009-106.  

We present more than 250,000 wind vectors derived from the visible (513 nm) images captured by the Venus Monitoring Camera (VMC) onboard ESA's Venus Express orbiter in the Southern hemisphere from 01 July 2007 to 29 January 2013. From comparison to the wind velocity derived from tracking of the descent probes, these measurements correspond to 60 ± 3 km altitude, being between two levels 70 ± 2 km and 55 ± 2 km, probed by VMC in ultraviolet (UV) (365 nm) and NIR (965 nm) channels, respectively. The mean zonal wind suggests retrograde circulation with mean zonal wind speed decreasing from 76.5 to 61.5 m/s at 30°–65°S. In low latitudes, 10–20°S, it increased to 82 m/s over the course of the mission. The mean zonal flow depends on local solar time and latitude and is affected by the large‐scale topography. The meridional winds indicated equatorward flow of up to 7 m/s in the middle and low cloud opposite to that derived from simultaneous UV observations at the cloud top.

Carbon dioxide is the major constituent of the Martian atmosphere. Its seasonal cycle plays an important role in atmospheric dynamics and climate. Formation of the polar CO2 frost deposits results in up to 30% of atmospheric pressure variations as well as in dramatic change in surface reflectance and emissivity. Another case of carbon dioxide condensation is formation of a CO2 clouds that are still poorly studied, despite the fact that they have been observed by a number of instruments [1−6] on the orbit of Mars.In this work, we will present first results of CO2 clouds observations from a combination of thermal-infrared (1.7−17 µm) and near-infrared (0.7-1.6 µm) spectra measured by TIRVIM and NIR instruments onboard the ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) in solar occultation geometry. These instruments are part of the Atmospheric Chemistry Suite (ACS), a set of three spectrometers (NIR, MIR, and TIRVIM) that is conducting scientific measurements on the orbit of Mars since the spring of 2018 [7].This work was funded by Russian Science Foundation, grant number 20-42-09035.References[1] Montmessin et al. (2006). Subvisible CO2 ice clouds detected in the mesosphere of Mars. Icarus, 183, 403–410. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.icarus.2006.03.015[2] Montmessin et al. (2007). Hyperspectral imaging of convective CO2 ice clouds in the equatorial mesosphere of Mars. Journal of Geophysical Research, 112, E11S90. https://doi.org/10.1029/2007JE002944[3] Määttänen et al. (2010). Mapping the mesospheric CO2 clouds on Mars: MEx/OMEGA and MEx/HRSC observations and challenges for atmospheric models. Icarus, 209, 452–469. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.icarus.2010.05.017[4] McConnochie et al. (2010). THEMIS-VIS observations of clouds in the Martian mesosphere: Altitudes, wind speeds, and decameter-scale morphology. Icarus, 210, 545–565. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.icarus.2010.07.021[5] Vincendon et al. (2011). New near-IR observations of mesospheric CO2 and H2O clouds on Mars. Journal of Geophysical Research, 116, E00J02. https://doi.org/10.1029/2011JE003827[6] Jiang et al., (2019). Detection of Mesospheric CO 2 Ice Clouds on Mars in Southern Summer. Geophysical Research Letters, 46(14), 7962–7971. https://doi.org/10.1029/2019GL082029[7] Korablev et al., (2018). The Atmospheric Chemistry Suite (ACS) of three spectrometers for the ExoMars 2016 Trace Gas Orbiter. Space Sci. Rev. 214, 7. doi:10.1007/s11214-017-0437-6

The discovery of chlorine in the martian atmosphere points to its surface origin.