The InSight Mars lander’s meteor search

Meteor surveys on other planets, such as Mars, can be used to constrain the variation in the meteoroid flux away from Earth. Images from the Spirit rover have previously been used for one such survey. We report on the sampling and results of a new survey conducted with InSight lander images. The InSight survey used cameras with wider fields of view and faster optics than the Spirit survey and comprised 9.7 h of cumulative exposure time, compared to 2.7 h for Spirit. No meteors were identified. We determined that while the InSight survey was more sensitive to bright meteors, it was less sensitive to faint meteors due to compression-related issues. Further, we determined that the Spirit survey was substantially less sensitive than previously reported, and neither survey had sufficient sensitivity to test theoretical expectations given expected detections ≪1. We conclude with recommendations for the design of any future surveys.