Related papers: Weiche Landung auf dem Mars
The Earth--Moon system has been experiencing impacts from asteroids and comets for billions of years. The Moon, as an airless body, has preserved a distinct record of these events in form of impact craters and ejecta deposits, offering…
The Martian atmosphere experiences large diurnal variations due to the ~24.6 h planetary rotation and its low heat capacity. Understanding such variations on a planetary scale is limited due to the lack of observations, which are greatly…
The climate of early Mars has been hotly debated for decades. Although most investigators believe that the geology indicates the presence of surface water, disagreement has persisted regarding how warm and wet the surface must have been and…
We assess the possibility of reducing the travel time of a crewed mission to Mars by examining four different propulsion methods and keeping the mass at departure under 2500 tonne, for a fixed architecture. We evaluated representative…
Current and future optical technologies will aid exploration of the Moon and Mars while advancing fundamental physics research in the solar system. Technologies and possible improvements in the laser-enabled tests of various physical…
Soil assessment is important for mobile robot planning and navigation on natural and planetary environments. Terramechanic characteristics can be inferred from the thermal behaviour of soils under the influence of sunlight using remote…
On Mars, fields of sand dunes contrast with the general cratered, rocky terrain commonly seen from orbit. Near the equator, in Gale Crater, images from the rover, Curiosity, also reveal order on smaller scales: ripples on dunes, and ground…
We present improved Mars Odyssey Neutron Spectrometer (MONS) maps of near-surface Water-Equivalent Hydrogen (WEH) on Mars that have intriguing implications for the global distribution of "excess" ice, which occurs when the mass fraction of…
The climate of Mars likely evolved from a warmer, wetter early state to the cold, arid current state. However, no solutions for this evolution have previously been found to satisfy the observed geological features and isotopic measurements…
Mars today has no active volcanism and its atmosphere is oxidizing, dominated by the photochemistry of CO2 and H2O. Using a one-dimensional photochemical model, we consider whether plausible volcanic gas fluxes could have switched the…
For the past several decades, numerous attempts have been made to model the climate of Mars with extensive studies focusing on the planet's dynamics and the understanding of its climate. While physical modeling and data assimilation…
It is still unknown how much water has escaped from Mars during its history. Hydrogen escape from Mars's atmosphere probably played a major role in drying the planet, but present-day Hloss rates (about 3x10^26 atoms per second on average)…
Robotic and human lunar landings are a focus of future NASA missions. Precision landing capabilities are vital to guarantee the success of the mission, and the safety of the lander and crew. During the approach to the surface there are…
Mid-Air Helicopter Delivery (MAHD) is a new Entry, Descent and Landing (EDL) architecture to enable in situ mobility for Mars science at lower cost than previous missions. It uses a jetpack to slow down a Mars Science Helicopter (MSH) after…
Observations show that the lower thermosphere of Mars ($\sim$100--140 km) is up to 40 K colder than the current general circulation models (GCMs) can reproduce. Possible candidates for physical processes missing in the models are larger…
Exploring planetary bodies with lower gravity, such as the moon and Mars, allows legged robots to utilize jumping as an efficient form of locomotion thus giving them a valuable advantage over traditional rovers for exploration. Motivated by…
Using Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN Magnetometer observations, we report the first statistical study of ultra-low frequency (ULF) waves at the Martian foreshock. The analyzed foreshock ULF wave events are observed in the…
Space poses significant challenges for humans, leading to physiological adaptations in response to an environment vastly different from Earth. A comprehensive understanding of these physiological adaptations is needed to devise effective…
We examine the conditions under which material from the martian moons Phobos and Deimos could reach our planet in the form of meteorites. We find that the necessary ejection speeds from these moons (900 and 600 m/s for Phobos and Deimos…
The evidence for abundant liquid water on early Mars despite the faint young Sun is a long-standing problem in planetary research. Here we present new ab initio spectroscopic and line-by-line climate calculations of the warming potential of…