NASA’s Perseverance rover collects two samples of Martian regolith

NASA’s Perseverance rover snagged two new samples from the Martian floor on Dec. 2 and 6. However not like the 15 rock cores collected to this point, these latest samples got here from a pile of wind-blown sand and dust just like however smaller than a dune. Now contained in particular steel assortment tubes, one in all these two samples shall be thought of for deposit on the Martian floor someday this month as a part of the Mars Pattern Return marketing campaign.

Scientists wish to research Martian samples with highly effective lab tools on Earth to seek for indicators of historical microbial life and to raised perceive the processes which have formed the floor of Mars. A lot of the samples shall be rock; nevertheless, researchers additionally wish to look at regolith—damaged rock and dust—not solely due to what it may possibly educate us about geological processes and the atmosphere on Mars, but additionally to mitigate a number of the challenges astronauts will face on the Purple Planet. Regolith can have an effect on all the pieces from spacesuits to solar panels, so it is simply as attention-grabbing to engineers as it’s to scientists.

As with rock cores, these newest samples had been collected utilizing a drill on the tip of the rover’s robotic arm. However for the regolith samples, Perseverance used a drill bit that appears like a spike with small holes on one finish to collect unfastened materials.

Engineers designed the particular drill bit after in depth testing with simulated regolith developed by JPL. Referred to as Mojave Mars Simulant, it is fabricated from volcanic rock crushed into quite a lot of particle sizes, from tremendous dust to coarse pebbles, primarily based on photographs of regolith and knowledge collected by earlier Mars missions.

“Every thing we study concerning the measurement, form, and chemistry of regolith grains helps us design and take a look at higher instruments for future missions,” mentioned Iona Tirona of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which leads the Perseverance mission. Tirona was the exercise lead for operations to gather the latest regolith pattern. “The extra knowledge we now have, the extra lifelike our simulants may be.”

The problem of dust

Learning regolith up shut may assist engineers design future Mars missions—in addition to the tools utilized by future Martian astronauts. Mud and regolith can harm spacecraft and science devices alike. Regolith can jam delicate elements and decelerate rovers on the floor. The grains may additionally pose distinctive challenges to astronauts: Lunar regolith was found to be sharp sufficient to tear microscopic holes in spacesuits in the course of the Apollo missions to the moon.

Regolith could possibly be useful if packed in opposition to a habitat to defend astronauts from radiation, nevertheless it additionally comprises dangers: The Martian floor comprises perchlorate, a poisonous chemical that might threaten the well being of astronauts if massive quantities had been unintentionally inhaled or ingested.

“If we now have a extra everlasting presence on Mars, we have to know the way the dust and regolith will work together with our spacecraft and habitats,” mentioned Perseverance group member Erin Gibbons, a McGill College doctoral candidate who makes use of Mars regolith simulants as a part of her work with the rover‘s rock-vaporizing laser, referred to as SuperCam.

“A few of these dust grains could possibly be as tremendous as cigarette smoke, and will get into an astronaut’s respiratory equipment,” added Gibbons, who was beforehand a part of a NASA program finding out human-robot exploration of Mars. “We would like a fuller image of which supplies can be dangerous to our explorers, whether or not they’re human or robotic.”

Apart from answering questions on well being and safety hazards, a tube of Martian regolith may encourage scientific surprise. it below a microscope would reveal a kaleidoscope of grains in numerous shapes and colours. Every one can be like a jigsaw puzzle piece, all of them joined collectively by wind and water over billions of years.

“There are such a lot of totally different supplies combined into Martian regolith,” mentioned Libby Hausrath of College of Nevada, Las Vegas, one in all Perseverance’s pattern return scientists. “Every pattern represents an built-in historical past of the planet’s floor.”

As an knowledgeable on Earth’s soils, Hausrath is most taken with discovering indicators of interplay between water and rock. On Earth, life is discovered virtually in all places there’s water. The identical may have been true for Mars billions of years in the past, when the planet’s local weather was rather more like Earth’s.