**Abstract**

Environmental factors in Mars atmosphere are a part of the research issues of the future Mars 2020 mission. The new rover surface vehicle will transport different instruments to investigate the geology, biology, and meteorology of Mars. Amongst these instruments, the Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer (MEDA) will be dedicated to the measurement of environment parameters. Two wind sensors will be included in the meteorological station MEDA because wind plays a very important role in Martian climate. High-quality wind data are required to build mathematical models of the Mars climate; therefore, powerful techniques are necessary to eliminate aerodynamic perturbations produced by the rover presence over wind measurements. This chapter is dedicated to the characterization of the aerodynamics around the Mars 2020 rover and its interaction with the rover Mars surface vehicle in order to get information to correct wind data coming from Mars.

**Keywords:** aerodynamics, rover, Mars, wind, sensors

## **1. Introduction**

The Mars 2020 rover mission is a part of NASA's Mars Exploration Program. This mission is conceived for the exploration of Mars, and additionally, it provides a way to demonstrate novel technologies addressed to the future Martian human expeditions [1]. The investigation of the environmental factors is an overriding aspect to get insight and a better understanding of the meteorological processes in Mars atmosphere. Satellites orbiting Mars provide remote sensing data for the study of Martian atmosphere, but a higher resolution data must be obtained by means of investigation surface vehicles.

The Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer (MEDA) is the contribution of Spain to the Mars Exploration Program, and it was designed as a mobile environmental station to be transported by Mars 2020 rover. MEDA sensors will provide information about both ambient and ground, such as wind speed and its direction, temperature, pressure, relative humidity, ultraviolet radiation, and size and shape of dust. MEDA wind sensors are inspired in the design of the wind sensor of Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) [2, 3] that was embarked on the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Curiosity rover [4].

The importance of studying the wind in Mars is manifold. On one hand, in situ propulsion will be necessary for long-term planetary surface missions, and the wind energy could be the power to push wind-driven craft for exploration. On the other

hand, quality measurements of the wind in Mars could provide a better understanding of the geophysical phenomena occurring in Mars such as dust devils, carving intracrater layered deposits, and changes on dunes or any other eolian processes due to the wind-driven particle mobility.
