Related papers: Saltation transport on Mars
The space challenges do exist at every stride on a human expedition to Mars that arise due to galactic natural phenomena and artificial technologies. This paper emphasizes on Mars orbital and planetary challenges encountered from orbit to…
The Martian magnetosheath acts as a conduit for mass and energy transfer between the upstream solar wind and its induced magnetosphere. However, our understanding of its global properties remains limited. Using nine years of data from…
Lunar dust particles are generated by hypervelocity impacts of interplanetary micron-meteoroids onto the surface of the Moon, which seriously threatens the security of explorations. Studying the lunar dust dynamics helps to understand the…
Here we discuss one of the current reservoirs of water on Mars, the regolith and rocks exposed at the surface. This reservoir is characterized by the presence of H_{2}O- and OH- bearing phases that produce a broad absorption at a wavelength…
The deuterium-to-hydrogen (D/H or 2H/1H) ratio of Martian atmospheric water (~6x standard mean ocean water, SMOW) is higher than that of known sources, requiring planetary enrichment. A recent measurement by NASA's Mars Science Laboratory…
Atmospheric escape is an important process that influences the evolution of planetary atmospheres. A variety of physical mechanisms can contribute to escape from an atmosphere, including thermal escape, ion escape, photochemical escape, and…
Space exploration has been on the rise since the 1960s. Along with the other planets such as Mercury, Venus, Saturn, and Jupiter, Mars certainly plays a significant role in the history of space exploration and has the potential to be the…
Near-surface perennial water ice on Mars has been previously inferred down to latitudes of about 45{\deg} and could result from either water vapor diffusion through the regolith under current conditions or previous ice ages precipitations.…
Mars' transition from an early "warm and wet" to the "cold and dry" environment left fingerprints on the geological record of fluvial activity on Mars. The morphological and mineralogical observations of aqueous activity provided varying…
The texture, composition, and morphology of dunes observed in the equatorial regions of Titan may reflect present and/or past climatic conditions. Determining the physio-chemical properties and the morphodynamics of Titan's dunes is…
Two arguments have suggested the presence of subsurface water ice at latitudes lower than 30\textdegree~on Mars. First, the absence of CO2 frost on pole-facing slopes was explained by the presence of subsurface ice. Second, models suggested…
Throughout the history of the solar system, Mars has experienced continuous asteroidal impacts. These impacts have produced impact-generated Mars ejecta, and a fraction of this debris is delivered to Earth as Martian meteorites. Another…
Composition of terrestrial planets records planetary accretion, core-mantle and crust-mantle differentiation, and surface processes. Here we compare the compositional models of Earth and Mars to reveal their characteristics and formation…
All three terrestrial planets with atmospheres support O3 layers of some thickness. While currently only that of Earth is substantial enough to be climatically significant, we hypothesize that ancient Mars may also have supported a thick O3…
A central question surrounding possible human exploration of Mars is whether crewed missions can be supported by available technologies using in situ resources. Here, we show that photovoltaics-based power systems would be adequate and…
The composition of an atmosphere has integrated the geological history of the entire planetary body. However, the long-term evolutions of the atmospheres of the terrestrial planets are not well documented. For Earth, there were until…
Small-crater counts on Mars light-toned sedimentary rock are often inconsistent with any isochron; these data are usually plotted then ignored. We show (using an 18-HiRISE-image, >10^4 crater dataset) that these non-isochron crater counts…
Planet-encircling dust storms fundamentally reshape Martian weather and the near-surface electrostatic environment. We investigate the generation and evolution of electric fields during global dust storms using bimodal dust size…
This paper refines model predictions for the production of methane from UV-irradiated interplanetary dust particles (IDPs) now that the Rover Environmental Monitoring Station (REMS) instrument onboard the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Rover…
A mathematical model and software implementation developed to predict trajectories of single lunar dust particles acted on by a high velocity gas flow is discussed. The model uses output from a computation fluid dynamics (CFD) or direct…