Aspects of atmospheric science and instrumentation for martian missions

There are four main reasons which make observations of meteorological phenomena in the Martian atmosphere important: (1) Meteorology as science, (2) Comparative meteorology between the Earth and Mars, (3) Other instruments need information about meteorological parameters, (4) Weather conditions essentially affect planning of safe future landings on Mars. The Earth and Mars have almost equal rotation periods and axial tilts, and hence similarities in the meteorology of these planets are considerable. At present, the number of theoretical modelling results of the Martian atmosphere is much larger than measured data, so measurements are urgently needed. Both in-situ observations on the planetary surface and remote sensing from an orbiter are necessary. The former give important ground-truth data to the latter. This paper outlines some open issues in Martian atmospheric research, and introduces promising capacitive micro sensors developed by the Vaisala Ltd, Finland, to be used in meteorological instrumentation for Mars. Due to the sensors' accuracy, light weight and low power consumption, they are very suitable for planetary exploration purposes.