#PressRelease 🗞️ Electric discharges caused by dust devils and dust storms on Mars have been identified for the first time by analysing sound recordings captured by the Perseverance rover's SuperCam microphone. 🌀
👉 www.cnrs.fr/en/press/ele...

We obtain a cohesive zone length of 70% of the slip-pulse length and a rupture velocity of 90% of the shear-wave speed. This correspond to an estimated energy release rate of 5.8MJ/m^2. This is the first time this key parameter of rupture dynamics is measured directly on fault.

This model allows to compute the particle velocity. So we inverted for the local rupture velocity and the size of the cohesion zone, by adjusting the computed slip-rate to the measured slip-rate.

Finally, we tested another widely used slip-pulse model. In this model, the shape of the stress profile within the slip-pulse portion of the fault is imposed: There is a cohesion zone in which the stress linearly decreases with the distance from the tip, followed by a constant stress area.

Then we used the interpolated slip-rate function as an input for a steady-state propagating pulse elastodynamic model, which allowed to estimate the stress-slip history and the breakdown work.

We have tracked the motion of some landmarks across the fault to measure the slip function and the slip rate function: