Related papers: Weiche Landung auf dem Mars
Small convective vortices occur ubiquitously on Mars, frequently as dust devils, and they produce detectable signals in meteorological data -- in pressure, temperature, and wind speed and direction. In addition to being important…
One-third of Mars' surface has shallow-buried H$_2$O, but it is currently too cold for use by life. Proposals to warm Mars using greenhouse gases require a large mass of ingredients that are rare on Mars' surface. However, we show here that…
Future missions to Mars and Venus will make use of aerobraking and aerocapture in order to gain mass through the saving of fuel at planetary arrival. So far only aerobraking has been demonstrated, if the Mars Premier project has paved the…
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…
It is currently uncertain as to whether methane exists on Mars. Data from the Curiosity Rover suggests a background methane concentration of a few tenths parts per billion whereas data from the Trace Gas Orbiter suggest an upper limit of…
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…
The goal of the Mars Sample Return campaign is to collect soil samples from the surface of Mars and return them to Earth for further study. The samples will be acquired and stored in metal tubes by the Perseverance rover and deposited on…
We introduce an instrument for a wide spectrum of experiments on gravities other than our planet's. It is based on a large Atwood machine where one of the loads is a bucket equipped with a single board computer and different sensors. The…
As space exploration extends into cislunar space and further towards Mars, understanding the relativistic effects on clocks on Mars, particularly in relation to multibody gravitational influences, becomes increasingly important for accurate…
Planet Mars past environmental conditions were similar to the early Earth, but nowadays they are similar to those of a very cold desert, irradiated by intense solar UV light. However, some terrestrial lifeform showed the capability to adapt…
We investigate the global seasonal variations of near-surface relative humidity and relevant attributes, like temperature and water vapor volume mixing ratio on Mars using calculations from modelled and measurement data. We focus on 2 am…
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…
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…
We propose to develop a full-accuracy flight test environment for the Mars helicopter and related Mars-atmospheric vehicles. The experiment would use reduced-g atmospheric flights with an aircraft that houses a properly sized vacuum…
Before deploying to the surface of Mars, the short-period (SP) seismometer of the InSight mission operated on deck for a total of 48 hours. This dataset can be used to understand how deck-mounted seismometers can be used in future landed…
Mars exploration motivates the search for extraterrestrial life, the development of space technologies, and the design of human missions and habitations. Here we seek new insights and pose unresolved questions relating to the natural…
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…
The abstract is additional with repect to the paper published in JGCD. Ordinary Earth satellites are usually placed into five categories of special orbits: sun-synchronous orbits, orbits at the critical inclination, frozen orbits, repeating…
Any rotorcraft on Mars will fly in a low pressure and dusty environment. It is well known that helicopters on Earth become highly-charged due, in part, to triboelectric effects when flying in sandy conditions. We consider the possibility…
Previously we presented a numerical model that predicts trajectories of lunar dust, soil, and gravel blown by the engine exhaust of a lunar lander. The model uses the gas density, velocity vector field, and temperature predicted by…