Geometric properties of water-ice clouds as observed from Jezero Crater in the first 600 sols with the NavCam Instrument onboard Mars2020 Rover, Perseverance

In the first 600 sols of the Mars2020 mission, LS 5.6o to 316.8o, 46 cloud movies and 145 cloud surveys were collected to observe clouds at Jezero Crater, the landing site of Perseverance Rover. Cloud movies were processed using the Mean Frame Subtraction (MFS) method revealing cloud structures, which were subsequently analysed using digital image processing. Two-dimensional Fast Fourier Transforms (FFT) were used to compute cloud structure sizes ranging from 2.90 km to 15.25 km for clouds between 30 km to 50 km altitude, based on coincident Mars Climate Sounder (MCS) vertical profiles of atmospheric water-ice. Same-value thresholding was utilized to detect the cloud structures in MFS-processed and projected cloud movies. The resolution dependence needed to resolve these structures over various thresholds was examined to find multifractal scaling of Mars clouds for resolutions between 0.1 km and 1.6 km. We characterize the multi-scaling observed in the images and its implications for the design of cloud-tracking cameras from the surface as well as cloud-resolving models.