The Dusty Concern for the Mission to Mars

eldavojohn writes "Astronauts sent to the red planet may find much of their job involving the task of dusting off their equipment and suits. The president says we're going there but the dusty planet has some obstacles and uncertainties for engineers because we don't have a sample of Martian dust. Is it toxic? Will it conduct electricity and short circuits? Will astronauts suffer from the triboelectric effect? How large is the average grain? Will humans be allergic to it? Will sinuses jeopardize a mission? Will a dust storm stop a take off and return flight? So many uncertainties from something as simple as dust but one thing is clear — we need samples!"

Comments

Re:New movie title

[iamlucky13]

Nope...the Mars Exploration Rovers' microscopic imagers can't resolve finely enough to measure grain size or geometry, and they have no way of measuring electrical properties. The Mars Surface Laboratory, to launch in 2009, will have slightly better resolution, but still not grain sized. In fact, I think in order to get a good idea what they finest grains look like, nothing short of an electron microscope will do. The rovers focus on geology and chemical composition, but not as much on things like dust geometry and electrical properties.

Regardless of whether or not its feasible to equip a lander to determine these properties itself, NASA and other groups would really like to get their hands directly on some Martian surface material, so a robotic sample return mission will very likely happen in the next 10-20 years regardless of whether plans move forward for manned exploration.

What makes the dust rise?

[pln2bz]

NASA would be wise to also carefully contemplate what is inducing the dust to rise to form dust storms in the first place. They already have access to THEMIS images from the Mars Odyssey Mission that suggest that there is filamentation of Martian dust storms at both the leading and trailing edges. For a sample image (there are others too), go to:

http://themis.asu.edu/zoom-20060512a

Furthermore, we also know that Martian dust devils can contain lightning bolts at their cores:

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2005/14jul_dust devils.htm

In addition to that, we also know that firsthand accounts from people who have seen the inside of a tornado and lived to tell about it indicate that tornadoes here on Earth tend to shimmer like a fluorescent light from the inside. This is typically obstructed from the outside by dust. There's a brief mention here. I'm sure there are other sources for this information:

http://library.thinkquest.org/C003603/english/torn adoes/insidetheeye.shtml

This could indicate that tornadoes and Martian dust devils are actually both electrical plasmas, and that the electrical activity is inducing the vortex -- not the other way around.

It is possible that vortexes are the natural result of the right-hand rule within electrodynamics. Peter Thomson's Charge Sheath Vortex site is an excellent tutorial on how this may be so:

http://www.peter-thomson.co.uk/tornado/fusion/Char ge_sheath_vortex_basics_for_tornado.html

He demonstrates his point at the end by creating a miniature vortex using electricity in a petri dish.

My point here is that NASA should seriously consider that the Martian dust is molecularly bipolar and is responding to solar and other electrical plasmas that are affecting the Martian planet. The evidence from both Mars and Earth suggests that it is a possibility.

We already know for a fact that upper atmosphere lightning exists. The weather scientists told us that this was not possible, and they were proven to be wrong. It's now easy to find pictures of upper-atmosphere sprites on the web. Try these:

http://usjma.jp/~sprite/sprite2005.11pic.html

http://www.usjma.jp/~kaminari/Sprite%202006/S%2020 06%20%203/sprite2006.3.13.html

http://www.usjma.jp/~kaminari/Gallery/Gallery%20SP RITE/galleryhome.html

http://www.usjma.jp/~kaminari/Gallery/Gallery%20SP RITE/Carrot/gscar01.html

So, why isn't it possible that they could also be wrong about current theories about tornadoes? And why in the world are those dust storms filamentary? When we see enigmatic features on Mars, we should create future missions to follow that data. As of recently, NASA has been exclusively following their script instead of the anomalies. We need to be doing both.

Re:The real question is

[Shihar]

"Dig a 1-foot deep hole in 30 seconds, as opposed to 30 years."
"Walk further than 100m per day"
"Walk into the bowl of a crater, poke around for interesting rocks, and carry the interesting rocks out."
"Immediately discern between 'interesting' and 'uninteresting' rocks without having to wait 24 hours to ask for new instructions." With the amount of money we would need to blow to get a handful of humans there (much less getting them back), we could EASILY build a robot to do each and every single one of those things. You could send a massive unmanned nuclear powered Mars lab complete with every single piece of analytical equipment you could wish for and a dozen rovers that range from toy car size to frigging backhoe. Not only could you dig a hole 1 foot deep, you could excavate a trench 10 feet deep, grab a sample, and throw it under a SEM.

The logistics of sending a human to Mars are silly. The rewards are pittance compared to what you could get for a fraction of the price with unmanned equipment. Sending humans to Mars is silly when we can barely crawl out of our own gravity well as it is. If NASA wants to do something productive, they could directly take on the problem of making space travel cheap so that everyone can do it, not a dozen humans per year. Forget screwing around the edges, NASA should dump the manned space program and pour all of its money into only three things; earth science, astronomy, and making space access as cheap as humanly possible.

As spiffy as the moon landing was, its only real practical value was to show the Soviet Union how big and meaty an American cock could get and how long the Americans could piss with it. Pissing contests are generally silly, but a pissing contest with yourself is just stupid... which is what the Mars mission is.

Take the money we are going to blow on Mars, and start working on a way to get humans into space so that there are actual commercial applications. If we could get the cost of sending a human into orbit down to say a million dollars or so, you could start seeing some real commercial applications and humans living in space full time.