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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!"
Actually, there's some body of work that describes a larger problem for Lunar explorers, although the Martian problem isn't anything to sneeze at, either. Pun intended.
As TFA points out, the lack of weathering processes on Luna leaves the dust/regolith mainly as sharp-edged grains, which actually gives them incredible abrasive power. This poses an enormous problem for mechanical assemblies that have any wear surfaces. The Apollo astronauts, IIRC, went through a couple pairs of suit gloves each simply from the wear of the dust on their metallic glove locking rings.
Martian dust might have a similar range of effects, but I hadn't heard of the "toxic dust" issue, yet; that's the interesting bit. Silicosis of the lungs and related disorders, yes; toxicity, no. Yikes.
Toxic dust makes me think of the blended iPhone. "Don't breathe this." Sorry, that's another article...
-joe.
Another as of yet unanswered question about Martian rock:
Will it blend?
(Sorry, but I just discovered the videos today, so my view of the universe if somewhat blendocentric)
__ Someday, but not this morning, I'll finally learn to use the preview button.
"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."
No disrespect intended to our robot overlords; they've done wonderful work over the past few decades, but sometimes the right tool for a job is pickaxe powered by 200 pounds of meat.
IIRC, the Mars rovers were originally (at least in concept, before budgetary reality set in) designed to drag back a sample or two. Why not build a mission that, you know, does what the original plans intended them to do in that regard? If nothing else, get up something with better instrumentation; Viking 1 and 2 were supposed to have the tools to answer nearly all of the questions, though they had been found to be flawed in many respects and hampered by things which today's tech has a better chance of overcoming.
Dunno... just sounds too easy to dismiss in light of all the ungodly extrapolation that we are capable of from mere astronomy, let alone what we can bring to bear with instruments on the ground there right now.
Quo usque tandem abutere, Nimbus, patientia nostra?
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.
I thought it was well known that the majority of dust was made up from dead skin....
Max.
Can we stop pretending we're going to send astronauts to Mars? There's is no way we're going to spend the enormous amount of money required to do it, and we don't even know if the astronauts can survive the radiation exposure on the trip.
Besides the fact that it won't be done by any government in the next 30 years, it *shouldn't* be done. I've harped on this before, but it's still true: we could send 1,000 probes similar to the Mars Lander for the price it takes to do a P.R. stunt like sending humans to Mars. Yeah, it's romantic, but if the goal is science, then it's a total waste.
I like space. I'm a supporter of space. But I think humans should go on the back burner until space exploration is much, much, much more of a mature technology. We don't even have casual trips to orbit, much less the moon, much less significant space stations, and much, much less Mars.
Let's be rational about space exploration and let an army of robots do the work, instead of a few fragile, expensive humans.
Sometimes it's best to just let stupid people be stupid.
Technically, the Mars Sample Return http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/technology/samplereturn/i ndex.html is a precursor mission (i.e., before manned landings) that's been "on the books", so to speak, for a while. It's a developmental mission model, having been bounced back-and-forth between front and back burners for a while, now, but the technology is all there. It's very expensive, as you can imagine, so that's part of the reason why it's not "ready" yet. Other reasons have to do with local infrastructure - we'd like to have a handle on good surface communications on Mars - and the fact that the science community can't really decide on a reasonable surface target. That's being helped by MER, and will really get a
good kick in the pants by the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL), which will be launching in 2009.
Of course, the public have very varied opinions about this...for example,when you Google "Mars Sample Return" you still get http://www.icamsr.org/ as your first hit. Sheesh.
Uphill battle, maybe.
--joe.
A liberal guise to stop the Republican agenda. Just like those nasty Surgeon Generals and all of their "Real Science"
"TV, a medium as it is neither rare nor well done." Ernie Kovacs
I wonder when the issue of sex in space will be taken seriously, and studies undertaken in that area. American may like to avoid the subject, but to most Europeans both Western and Eastern, its a well known reality. If we're going to take long missions to places like Mars, sex better be understood to be something that's going to happen. And I'm not talking about solitary masturbation...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
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:
t devils.htm
n adoes/insidetheeye.shtml
r ge_sheath_vortex_basics_for_tornado.html
0 06%20%203/sprite2006.3.13.html
P RITE/galleryhome.html
P RITE/Carrot/gscar01.html
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_dus
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/tor
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/Cha
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%202
http://www.usjma.jp/~kaminari/Gallery/Gallery%20S
http://www.usjma.jp/~kaminari/Gallery/Gallery%20S
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.
"A man cannot begin to learn that which he thinks he already knows." --Epictetus, 1st Century A.D.
Apparently, there were many, many unanticipated problems with lunar "dust".
. stme id=51367
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/6460089
http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap980327.html
http://dailybeacon.utk.edu/showarticle.php?articl
As expected, enginerds never seem to want to underestimate a problem especially when they've heard of a similar problem before...
Certainly we should build space crafts that leave open the option for possible human "passengers", but, in my opinion, our focus should be on building capable and independent robots to do our dirty work for us. The current "boots on the ground" at Mars are great examples. In fact, we are in desperate need right now of moving to true computer intelligence instead of our current programmable logic.
A level of a 4 year old would actually be sufficient for most applications. Not only is this type of technology useful on world exploration, but it would revolutionize our world. One small example is that burglarly and building fires would become a thing of the past if we had a truely intelligent computer systems monitoring and managing buildings.
And, ummm, this would be a lot simpler and cheaper than having the humans continue the remaining 0.001 percent of the way?
rj
Oh, all right. I'll go up there and get some damned samples. I had other things to do, but since this seems to be such a big deal to you....
The world is my oyster. That's why it's always in a stew.
Yes, yes, yes,yes,yes, and yes.
Everything you fear is true, plan for it.
solution, give the astronauts a pair of leaf blowers to blow each other off before heading back in the habitat, that would reduce dust ingress into the habitat significantly, make all suits banished to the entry room, force a shower in recycled water before entering station.
They got any hard problems? because industrial complexes have dealt with these problems already for decades.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
There are several much more significant challenges than dust:
* The lack of any kind of spaceship capable of making the return trip
* The lack of any kind of system for keeping the crew alive in space for that long
* The lack of any serious programme to develop the above
* The lack of the money such a programme would require
* The lack of the political will to address any of the points above
* The lack of public interest in any of the points above *this* point
Overall, I think it's probably not a good idea to burn Earth yet.
Whence? Hence. Whither? Thither.
And then suffer a historically 50/50 chance of losing it somewhere between launch and landing. Everyone seems to forget that Mars is a space probe graveyard.
In Repressive Burma, it's not just your connection that dies. slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=314547&cid=20819199
Won't there be similar lung related illness like asbestosis on Earth caused by all that dust?
My web domain.
That's a wonderful idea. Someone should just go tell the computer scientists and engineers to get their thumbs out of their asses and invent us some artificial intelligence, since obviously all they do now is sit around playing D & D and doing bong hits.
The sheer vision - it borders on godlike.
From the parents link:NASA is seeking public opinion on ways to detect possible biohazards from Mars samples returned to the Earth.
6 ,00.html
Wouldn't any biohazard, bacteria or virius, culture fairly easily in a petri dish? If it could survive and breed in us, it could survive and breed in a lab. It's not like we don't already have experience with weaponized viriuses, what's another few grams of potential mass extinction added to the collection?
And for every who thinks we stopped biological weapons research in 1972, look at this: http://www.guardian.co.uk/usa/story/0,12271,82130
We are all just people.
Yep -- 3 to 20 minutes one way, meaning you don't see the results of your command until 6 to 40 minutes later.
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
"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.
How do you think they make iPhones?
For chuff's sake, just run a kamikaze mission. Don't even bother about getting the astronauts back. Enough lives are being wasted pointlessly in Iraq and Afghanistan. If a few astronauts give their lives collecting important data which can be sent back to Earth and used to plan a safer mission in future, well, that counts as much more pointful than getting blown to bits in a war there is no hope of winning.
Je fume. Tu fumes. Nous fûmes!
(In that case, I would be more concerned about the effects on us when opening access to closed underground lakes on Earth, but those are still also far more susceptible to being destroyed by "our" biological environment, not the other way round.)