Related papers: Wind erosion on Mars and other small terrestrial p…
Dust and sand motion are a common sight on Mars. Understanding the interaction of atmosphere and Martian soil is fundamental to describe the planet's weather, climate and surface morphology. We set up a wind tunnel to study the lift of a…
In this work we present laboratory measurements on the reduction of the threshold friction velocity necessary for lifting dust if the dust bed is illuminated. Insolation of a porous soil establishes a temperature gradient. At low ambient…
Global and mesoscale models represent the background (slowly varying) winds on Mars, but short timescale wind variability is not explicitly represented. The local wind erosion and dust deposition model can be useful for more accurate local…
Aeolian sediment transport is observed to occur on Mars as well as other extraterrestrial environments, generating ripples and dunes as on Earth. The search for terrestrial analogues of planetary bedforms, as well as environmental…
The wind-driven hopping motion of sand grains, known as saltation, forms dunes and ripples and ejects fine dust particles into the atmosphere on both Earth and Mars. While the wind speed at which saltation is initiated, the fluid threshold,…
Experiments were performed to study how rocket exhaust blows soil in lunar and Martian conditions. Jets of gas were blown downwardly at various granular materials while a camera recorded the formation of scour holes as the material was…
It is a long-standing open question whether electrification of wind-blown sand due to tribocharging - the generation of electric charges on the surface of sand grains by particle-particle collisions - could affect rates of sand transport…
A planetesimal moves through the gas of its protoplanetary disc where it experiences a head wind. Though the ambient pressure is low, this wind can erode and ultimately destroy the planetesimal if the flow is strong enough. For the first…
In parabolic flight experiments we studied the wind induced erosion of granular beds composed of spherical glass beads at low gravity and low ambient pressure. Varying g-levels were set by centrifugal forces. Expanding existing parameter…
Small scale jet-induced erosion experiments are useful for identifying the scaling of erosion with respect to the various physical parameters (gravity, grain size, gas velocity, gas density, grain density, etc.), and because they provide a…
Most of Mars' ancient sedimentary rocks by volume are in wind-eroded sedimentary mounds, but the connections between mound form and wind erosion are unclear. We perform mesoscale simulations of different crater and mound morphologies to…
Our research objective is to characterize Mars' low-altitude (250 km) induced magnetic fields using data from NASA's MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) Mission. We aim to assess how the induced magnetic fields behave under…
Multiple nations are planning activity on the Moon's surface, and to deconflict lunar operations we must understand the sandblasting damage from rocket exhaust blowing soil. Prior research disagreed over the scaling of the erosion rate,…
The illuminated dusty surface of Mars acts like a gas pump. It is driven by thermal creep at low pressure within the soil. In the top soil layer this gas flow has to be sustained by a pressure gradient. This is equivalent to a lifting force…
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…
We present a statistical analysis on the variability of the incompressible energy cascade rate in the solar wind around Mars, making use of an exact relation for fully developed turbulence and more than five years of Mars Atmosphere and…
Post-Noachian Martian paleochannels indicate the existence of liquid water on the surface of Mars after about 3.5 Gya (Irwin et al., 2015; Palucis et al., 2016). In order to explore the effects of variations in CO$_{2}$ partial pressure and…
As winds blow over sand, grains are mobilized and reorganized into bedforms such as ripples and dunes. In turn, sand transport and bedforms affect the winds themselves. These complex interactions between winds and sediment render modeling…
We present a new database of $>$300 layer-orientations from sedimentary mounds on Mars. These layer orientations, together with draped landslides, and draping of rocks over differentially-eroded paleo-domes, indicate that for the…
In the distant future, humans will surely fly to Mars. Even today, probes and vehicles are carrying out measurements on the surface of Mars. However, most landings on Mars cannot be carried out with parachutes alone. Instead, landing…