Theres no chance to sugarcoat it: Mars has a “dust issue.” The surface of the Red Planet is covered in particulate matter including little bits of silica and oxidized minerals. Throughout a Martian summertime in the southern hemisphere, the planet experiences dust storms that can grow to include the whole planet. At other times of the year, dust devils and dusty skies are a relentless problem. This danger has actually claimed robotic explorers that depend on solar panels to charge their batteries, like NASAs Opportunity rover and the InSight lander, which ended their objectives in 2018 and 2022, respectively.
Martian dust has actually likewise been a persistent obstacle for the Ingenuity helicopter, the rotorcraft that has actually been checking out Mars together with NASAs Perseverance rover given that February 2021. Thankfully, the way it has kicked up dust has actually supplied vital information that could prove important for rotorcraft sent out to check out other extraterrestrial environments in the future. Utilizing this information, a team of researchers (with assistance from NASA) has completed the first real-world study of Martian dust dynamics, which will support missions to Mars and Titan (Saturns largest moon) in this and the next decade.
The research study was led by Mark T. Lemmon, a senior research researcher at the Space Science Institutes (SSI) Center for Mars Science in Boulder, Colorado. He was signed up with by researchers from the Stevens Institute of Technology, the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL), Aeolis Research, Cornell University, Arizona State University, the Centro de Astrobiologia (INTA-CSIC), and NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The paper that describes their analysis recently appeared in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Planets.
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A Serpent Dust Devil on Mars, captured by the High-Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) aboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). Credit: NASA/JPL/University of Arizona
Studying dust characteristics on another world is tough, provided the communications and ranges hold-ups involved. As a result, researchers count on Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) to mimic how dust behaves in extraterrestrial environments based on the regional conditions. Said Jason Rabinovitch, an assistant teacher at the Stevens Institute of Technology and a co-author on the research study:
Particularly, they approximate that Ingenuity kicked up about one-thousandth of its own mass (1.8 kg; 4 pounds) each time it flew. This is lot of times more dust than a rotorcraft of similar mass would create here in the world, an outcome of Martian gravity being roughly 40% that of Earths and atmosphere pressure being less than half of a percent. Provided the staying unpredictabilities, Rabinovich and his colleagues are cautious about making direct comparisons.
” When you think about dust on Mars, you need to consider not just the lower gravity, but also the effects of air pressure, temperature level, air density– theres a lot we dont yet completely comprehend,” he stated. However, the reality that there is still much to be learned becomes part of what makes the research study so fascinating. “It was interesting to see the Mastcam-Z video from Perseverance, which was considered engineering factors, ended up showing Ingenuity lifting so much dust from the surface that it opened a brand-new line of research,” added Lemmon.
This research will cause a much better understanding of Martian dust storms, which would help NASA extend future missions that count on solar power. It could also aid with Entry, landing, and descent (EDL) methods whenever delicate devices requires to arrive at Mars dirty surface area– like the NASA/ESA Mars Sample Return (MSR) objective. It might also cause a much better understanding of the role dust storms play in meteorological phenomena that Earth and Mars share.
This will also prove helpful for mission planners dealing with NASAs Dragonfly mission, a nuclear-powered quadcopter that will release towards Titan (Saturns biggest moon) by 2027. For any celestial bodies that have atmospheres, wind-borne disintegration, and lots of particle matter on their surfaces, these types of research studies will be invaluable when it comes time to prep objectives to explore them.
Additional Reading: Stevens Institute of Technology, JGR: Planets
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Rabinovitch has been working with NASA JPL and the Ingenuity program because 2014, producing the first theoretical models of dust kicked up by helicopters on Mars.
” When you think about dust on Mars, you have to think about not simply the lower gravity, but also the results of air pressure, temperature level, air density– theres a lot we dont yet totally comprehend,” he stated. It could likewise lead to a much better understanding of the role dust storms play in meteorological phenomena that Earth and Mars share.
The Rabinovitch Research Group at Stevens investigates plume-surface interactions throughout the powered descent of spacecraft. They also model supersonic parachute inflation, small satellite hybrid rocket propulsion, and geophysical phenomena. This consists of “yardangs,” a feature found in the world and Mars where protruding rocks are sculpted by the dual action of wind abrasion by dust and sand and the elimination of loose product by wind turbulence (deflation). Rabinovitch has actually been dealing with NASA JPL and the Ingenuity program considering that 2014, producing the first theoretical models of dust kicked up by helicopters on Mars.
For the sake of their study, Rabinovich and his colleagues used advanced image-processing techniques to draw out info from the low-resolution videos of Ingenuitys 6 helicopter flights recorded by Perseverance. By determining small variations in between video frames and the light intensity of specific pixels, Rabinovich and his colleagues determined the size and mass of dust clouds the helicopter kicked up during takeoff, hovering, and landing. The outcomes were strikingly similar to the models he and his associates created in 2014.
Martian dust has also been a relentless challenge for the Ingenuity helicopter, the rotorcraft that has actually been checking out Mars along with NASAs Perseverance rover because February 2021. Using this data, a group of researchers (with support from NASA) has actually completed the first real-world study of Martian dust dynamics, which will support missions to Mars and Titan (Saturns biggest moon) in this and the next years.
” Theres a reason that helicopter pilots in the world choose to arrive on helipads. When a helicopter lands in the desert, its downdraft can stimulate enough dust to cause a zero-visibility brownout– and Mars is effectively one huge desert. Space is a data-poor environment. Its hard to send out images and videos back to Earth, so we have to deal with what we can get.”