Buoyant thermal plumes from planetary landers and rovers: Application to sizing of meteorological masts

AbstractObjective s on Mars and Titan may have warm surfaces as a result of solar heating or the carriage of radioisotope power sources. This warmth can perturb downwind meteorological measurements, but cannot be modeled as a simple aerodynamic wake because buoyant forces can be significant. s an analytic model from the industrial aerodynamics literature on smoke dispersion from fires and smokestacks to evaluate the plume trajectories. Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) simulations are also performed for a Titan lander. s elds results similar to the analytic model. (Albeit with a possibly weaker dependence on windspeed than the classic model.) We apply the models to evaluate the probability of immersion of instrumentation in plumes from the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Curiosity and for a Titan lander under various wind scenarios. sions perturbations can be easily calculated. ce implications