Astrogeology

Wind Erosion On Mars And Other Small Terrestrial Planets

By Keith Cowing
Press Release
astro-ph.EP
November 5, 2019
Filed under
Wind Erosion On Mars And Other Small Terrestrial Planets
Schematic of the experiment from Musiolik et al. (2018).
astro-ph.EP

We carried out wind tunnel experiments on parabolic flights with 100 μm Mojave Mars simulant sand. The experiments result in shear stress thresholds and erosion rates for varying g-levels at 600 Pa pressure.

Our data confirm former results on JSC Mars 1A simulant where the threshold shear stress is lower under Martian gravity than extrapolated from earlier ground-based studies which fits observations of Martian sand activity. The data are consistent with a model by Shao and Lu (2000) and can also be applied to other small terrestrial (exo)-planets with low pressure atmospheres.

Maximilian Kruss, Grzegorz Musiolik, Tunahan Demirci, Gerhard Wurm, Jens Teiser
(Submitted on 5 Nov 2019)

Subjects: Earth and Planetary Astrophysics (astro-ph.EP); Instrumentation and Methods for Astrophysics (astro-ph.IM)
Journal reference: Icarus 337 (2020), 113438
DOI: 10.1016/j.icarus.2019.113438
Cite as: arXiv:1911.01692 [astro-ph.EP] (or arXiv:1911.01692v1 [astro-ph.EP] for this version)
Submission history
From: Maximilian Kruss
[v1] Tue, 5 Nov 2019 10:02:03 UTC (750 KB)
https://arxiv.org/abs/1911.01692
Astrobiology, Astrogeology

Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA Space Station Payload manager/space biologist, Away Teams, Journalist, Lapsed climber, Synaesthete, Na’Vi-Jedi-Freman-Buddhist-mix, ASL, Devon Island and Everest Base Camp veteran, (he/him) 🖖🏻