Mars can be very windy.
A weather station called the Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer (MEDA) was one of the instruments carried by the Perseverance rover. Two wind sensors that measure speed and direction are part of the instrument.
The principal investigator of MEDA told Space.com that the MEDA can still keep track of the wind at its landing area despite the damage done to the wind sensor.
The Ingenuity helicopter is still on Mars.
A scientist at the Spanish Astrobiology Center in Madrid wrote in an e-mail that the sensor is diminished in its capabilities but still provides speed and direction magnitudes.
The two approximately ruler-sized wind sensors on Perseverance are surrounded by six individual detectors that aim to give accurate readings from any direction, according to materials from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, which manages the rover.
JPL officials stated that the Perseverance does affect wind currents by its own movements through the thin Martian atmosphere and that each of the two main wind sensors is attached to a boom that can unfold to move the sensors away from the rover.
The wind sensor was designed with protection in mind. There is a limit to what can be done.
The limit for an instrument like MEDA is more difficult since the sensors have to be exposed to environmental conditions. Some of the detector elements were damaged when stronger-than- anticipated winds lifted larger pebbles than expected.
"Neither the predictions nor the experience we had from previous missions foresaw such strong winds," Rodriguez said. He is the principal investigator of a temperature and wind sensor on the InSight lander that is expected to end its mission this year.
It was ironic that the sensors were damaged by wind.
Perseverance landed on Mars in February of 2021.
The most promising material to cache for a future sample return-mission is being picked up by the rover.
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