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Arthur T Knackerbracket has found the following story:

More than a year after NASA's Mars InSight lander touched down in a pebble-filled crater on the Martian equator, the rusty red planet is now serving up its meteorological secrets: Gravity waves, surface swirling "dust devils," and the steady, low rumble of infrasound, Cornell and other researchers have found.

"This is entirely new territory we are exploring," said Don Banfield '87, principal research scientist and the science lead for the Auxiliary Payload Sensor Suite, or APSS, aboard InSight.

The Cornell-led research was published Feb. 24 in Nature Geoscience.

While other scientists studying the stationary Martian lander explore what lies beneath the planet's surface, the APSS team keeps track of the meteorology above.

[...]The craft features a seismometer for detecting Mars' quakes; sensors for gauging wind and air pressure; a magnetometer for measuring the planet's magnetic forces; and a probe designed to take the planet's temperature.

Banfield and the meteorology team were surprised that their sensors detected gravity waves[*], which are buoyancy oscillations of air parcels. Such waves on Earth can create linear rows of rolled "morning glory" clouds—white, puffy clouds that look like lofty jelly rolls. "We're still working to understand what these waves can teach us about Mars," Banfield said.

Banfield and his colleagues have noted "infrasound"—pressure oscillations below 10 Hertz, found by the lander's sensors. It is a low rumbling below what the human ear can detect.

"We expected infrasound would exist, but this is the first direct measurement," Banfield said. "It's still mysterious as to exactly what causes the signals we've heard, but we'll keep studying."

[*] Note: Gravity waves should not be confused with gravitational waves (combining of large stellar objects).

Journal Reference:
Don Banfield, et al. The atmosphere of Mars as observed by InSight, Nature Geoscience (2020). DOI: 10.1038/s41561-020-0534-0

Original Submission