Ghostly columns of dust return to Jezero crater
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- čas přidán 8. 04. 2023
- Episode 105
After a winter lull in the action, the return of spring in Jezero crater has brought back swirling thermal updrafts known as dust devils. In Mars exploration, they’ve mostly been a force for good, but occasionally they do harm. - Věda a technologie
Thanks!
Your support of this channel is much appreciated. Thanks for this!
I just wanted to say that I look forward to these Sunday morning episodes. They have become part of my routine! Thanks for all the work you put into them.
Thanks for saying so! It's great to know that this channel is part of a Sunday routine.
I really enjoy your videos. Perfect for the non-specialist. Positivity without any hype. The 'to scale' is SO important for me. It makes the landscape make sense. I get a frisson of expectation every time one of your most excellent episodes pops up on my feed. Please know that I appreciate the work you put in.
So glad you appreciate this content. Thanks for the encouraging words and for introducing me to a new one!
I will always watch a Mars Guy episode as soon as it is released. Fascinating and really informative.
absolutely. Always fascinating to watch.
Agreed.
100% true for me too
Sunday morning routine: Get the local newspaper- read the comics first, then the science section. Followed by turning on the computer for a new episode of Mars Guy.
Thanks for all the encouraging comments!
Interesting that even with a surface atmospheric pressure only 1% of that on Earth, Mars' winds were still sufficient to damage the wiring of the wind sensor. That may suggest that Mars dust particles have sharp edges like Moon dust.
Yes, and it always puzzles me that the helicopter can actually lift in that atmosphere
@@bennyandersen742 I absolutely agree that Ingenuity, the Mars helicopter, is remarkable because it CAN fly. And probably, as we speak, it has flown 50 times! It makes you realize just how great the JPL engineers are.
@@bennyandersen742 It's the equivalent altitude of 100,000 feet on Earth, where helium balloons can easily reach and also be carried by the wind. The Perlan-2 sailplane is designed for +90,000ft, but so far only reached 76,000ft as they're limited by the power of the towing plane.
@@_John_PYes, however, the altitude record for rotorcraft on Earth is a mere 40,000 feet. To put Ingenuity's ability to fly on an even higher pedestal.
@@bosoerjadi2838 That's 40,000ft under 1g gravity. If the gravity difference is corrected for then 40,000ft is equivalent to 105,000ft (the record is 40,820ft). On the other hand, 100,000ft for Ingenuity is 38,000ft on Earth, so it's just shy of breaking an altitude record on Earth.
Fascinating and so well narrated, always a pleasure to watch !
Thanks for the encouraging words!
Thank You Mars Guy! Great comparison of rocks on Earth and Mars. I just love to see those similarities between both worlds.
Thanks. And yes, it's fun to make those comparisons.
If only one of these dust devils hit insight😢, excellent episode Mars Guy👩🚀
Thanks. Apparently Insight did experience wind vortices, but they weren't carrying the sand needed to clear dust.
I appreciate your adding the "Mars Guy for Scale" to these videos. Really helps at understanding what we're looking at.
Thanks. Glad you appreciate this approach.
Another great video Mr Mars! Poltergeists on Mars, now that's a scary thought! 😳😬 I love dust devils, as kids we'd try to catch up to them if they were close, but I'm sure those are much more fierce! Thanks 😊 for another great video!
Thanks again. Lots of dust devils here in Arizona, which I find endlessly fascinating.
I can totally see Mars' guy doing the Martian weather for us on futuristic holographic projectors 🪐💓👍
Ha, ha :)
Ha ha indeed!
Thanks for the awesome report!
Thanks so much for supporting this channel! Much appreciated.
I admire the way you explain the discoveries we are so fortunate to know about Mars in plain layman’s language.
Thanks for your kind words!
@@MarsGuy My pleasure. I still can't believe we are getting such hi-res MARS data and imagery from a tiny reddish dot in a clear night sky.
Another great video Mars Guy, thanks so much again.
Thanks again for watching and commenting.
Always informative, thanks Mars Guy!
Glad you're watching!
In my daily work I occasionally ask for a 'Mars Guy for scale' in presentations. One of my favourite expressions to use. Thank you for your great work. You help to make Mars relatable and tangible to me.
Ha, I'd like to be there for one of the presentations! Thanks for the comment.
Spirits of Mars 👻
Thanks for the update 👍
Ha! Thanks for watching.
Love your videos.
Glad you do, thanks.
The rock garden in these latest images reminds me of some of the Viking lander images. One that I do not understand is how layered rocks become tilted on Mars, were there is little or no tectonic activity. Maybe Mars Guy could provide us with a short lesson on this subject one day.
Search for cross-bedding, as no tilting is required.
@@_John_P Found it! Now I understand. Thank you!
Another great episode! See ya next week.
Thanks. And thanks for watching next week!
Cool, thanks.Cheers from the Pacific West Coast of Canada.
Thanks for watching from Canada!
Thanks Mars Guy
Yep!
Another great episode, Mars Guy. Thank you. Your channel is the best!
Glad you think so! Thanks.
A rover-wash could be built between the two rock formations :)
I know Percy doesn't have solar panels to dust off and that heavy gusts of dust don't do well for the wind sensors. Perhaps application could be found for "dust devils" if they were known to form or be "drawn to pass" between concavities.
Nick North: Very clever! With recycling of water of course!
@@roberttelarket4934 Indeed!, we will catch the water from those thin clouds of ice water with a captive balloon that acts as a condenser ;)
Awesome M.G 👍🇬🇧😎
Thanks 👍
Thank you
Wonderful job
❤
Thanks for watching.
A strange and wonderful place. The hardware is almost unbeileveable. 🙂🙂
I wonder what would happen if Ingenuity were to run into one of those dust devils in flight, or on the ground for that mater?
I'm afraid if that were to happen Ingenuity would be pounding sand for it's last scientific mission .......
Dust devils. By the way, I have difficulty communicating because I had a stroke in Broca’s area, the part of the brain that controls speech. 2/8/2021 but I lived again. (My wife helped me compose this.)
DUST ---> ::...~'o'
Very interesting phenomenon 🙂👍
Thanks
Thanks for supporting Mars Guy. Glad you appreciate the content on this channel.
01:24 Look at that extremely pointed rock in the foreground. It's rocks like these that have destroyed Curiosity's wheels. WOW!
Ahhh... yes, it's finally springtime on Barsoom. I had better get to my local Lowes in Jezero County and purchase a new low atmospheric pressure barbeque, some outdoor furniture and a new hot tub to go in my pressurized ranch-style hab overlooking the Delta.
Ha!
Martian Sand Tornadoes? Despite the thin atmosphere, you can still get dust devils, wind damage, and fly a helicopter....
Let's hope the dust devils do not tip over Ingenuity. That would be my main fear, but maybe unjustly.
Ingenuity is designed to take a lateral wind loading of 135mph (220kph), which is obtained through a low center of gravity combined with legs spread at 45 degrees with the vertical. The maximum wind speed at the location, as recorded by Perseverance MEDA weather station, was so far only 25mph (40kph). The Viking landers measured 70mph (115kph) during a dust storm and Mars Global Surveyor satellite measured changes in the surface topography due to wind erosion, in between scanning passes with its laser altimeter, that suggest winds of 135mph on the surface are possible, and is the reason why Ingenuity was designed for that wind speed.
'The Poltergeists of Mars' I see a movie coming one day :)
Ha!
April, 13 2023 (sol 763 Mars2020):
Ingenuity's flight log marks an altitude record above the ground: 18 meters.
It was reported as a pop-up (not as the altitude held throughout the trip).
The Airfield Mu is located in the lower right corner of the Rocky Mountain quad.
The helicopter points ( one NAV photo ) towards the center of Belva crater, as it happened when it was in the vertical of Airfield Lambda, although RTE images of said crater, if any, have not yet been made public.
Perseverance characterized the NW perimeter of the Foel Drygarn unit and the outer rim of Belva crater just north of Airfield Kappa and climbed a slope to enter the NE corner of the Voyageurs quad very close to Airfield Lambda.
Cool
🖖
Another good episode. Thanks. I've always found it baffling that a planet with atmospheric pressure only one percent of our own could support dust devils, small helicopters and glide parachutes. It seems like they'd all just fall out of the Martian sky.
1% of Earth's atmosphere is still substantial, as on Earth that's about 100,000ft, where helium balloons can reach and be carried by the wind, and the sailplane Perlan-2 is theoretically capable of almost reaching, as it's designed for 90,000ft.
Thanks again @Mike Black. And it is non-intuitive that the Martian atmosphere can be so active.
wow
Is there any risk to Ingenuity from these dust devils? I grew up in New Mexico, where they were frequent in spring and summer. If Ingenuity were to be toppled onto its side, that might not be recoverable.
It can take wind speeds of 135mph (220kph) whilst landed. Dust devils on Mars reach 25mph (40kph) but wind speeds may reach up to 135mph, which is the design figure for Ingenuity, and so far at the location, the maximum wind speed measured by Perseverance was only 25mph.
Any measurement of the vortex wind velocity of a Mars dust devil?
Yes, Perseverance recorded wall speeds of 25mph (40kph), similar to dust devils on Earth.
Hey Mars Guy, I have a question. Do we understand how dust devils actually form/start ?. Thanks.
There's a foundation paper on the subject "Dust Devils on Earth and Mars" by Balme and Greeley (2006) that builds up on the original paper "General Characteristics of Dust Devils" by Sinclair (1966). The introduction gives a brief overview and section 5 talks about the process in detail. In summary, it's down to the atmospheric superadiabatic lapse rate that rises above a threshold (a relatively warm surface compared to the incoming air column), combined with a source of vorticity and availability of debris on the surface that make the dust devil visible.
@@_John_P Interesting that dust devils on Mars were predicted in 1966...
@@chrisantoniou4366 Sinclair's paper is about dust devils on Earth. Balme and Greeley's paper is about dust devils on both planets.
@@_John_P Thanks, I thought they were both written in 1966...
@@chrisantoniou4366 No, the other one came 40 years later, in 2006.
👍💪✌
Happy Easter professor!
So did we loose all wind information for that area?
Thanks for that. My understanding is that some capability remains.
I'd like to express some curiosity about Curiosity. Any significant updates?
The Curiosity team is good about regular updates: mars.nasa.gov/msl/mission-updates/
Hi, you make interesting videos. What I am interested in is how you calculate the size of mars guy in the pictures. How do you know the size of the objects? Thank you.
Glad you're interested. If the rover tracks or wheels are in the scene, I use them to estimate sizes. Otherwise I look for rocks that are in both the rover scene and in the orbital view. The larger ones can be measured: mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/mission/where-is-the-rover/
All space probes and helicopters should have solar panels but they should sport bristle dust brushes. I bought my wooden handle brush at Ames. I think NASA and Jet Propulsion Labs could afford them.
Mars Guy - Question...
How do the Rover and Helicopter navigate? I assume there's no "Mars GPS". So to return to an exact location or move to a new location how are they doing it?
True about no GPS. So they have onboard autonomous navigation based on imaging and other sensors.
Any thoughts what will happen to Ingenuity should a dust devil finds it?
It would be its first shower in a couple of years.
I seems hard to imagine how such a thin atmosphere could loft sand a millimeter off the ground let alone a meter?
That's an intriguing question that prompted researchers to build vortex generators in pressure chambers to simulate dust devils, such as NASA's Mars Surface Wind Tunnel and Vortex Generator, and Arizona State University Vortex Generator (ASUVG), although they can't fully simulate the Martian gravity. One paper that sheds light on the process is "Martian dust devils: Laboratory simulations of particle threshold" by Greeley, Balme et al.
@@_John_P Electromagnetism and the lower gravity probably help.
@@puddintame7794 In the study, they concluded that it's the pressure differential between the eye and the wall of the dust devil that provides the lifting mechanism. Electrostatic forces cause airborne particles to clump together, making them less likely to stay airborne above a certain threshold, but more likely to remain airborne below the threshold due to increased surface area in comparison to particle weight. It's been observed that smaller particles tend to accrete inside dust devils and then eventually be ejected far from their pickup point. Whilst larger particles still within the threshold can be picked up close to the centre, but at the same time be above the threshold for the wall speed and, as a result, be ejected right away, causing a line of locally deposited particles only a few meters wide along either side of the trail left behind by the dust devil, which is possibly one of the mechanisms that led to Perseverance receiving a shower of particles from a devil that went past it, instead of cleaning it.
@@_John_P "...Electrostatic forces cause airborne particles to clump together..."
hypothesis:
I imagine particles of dust and sand (similar but different sizes) blown by the wind arriving at "a suitable place for them to move in circles" (a hole in a rock or a larger diameter crater), if the sun heats the atmosphere just above "that frying pan" perhaps the thickest ones occupy the periphery in the gyre and rise forming "a wall" of electrostatically linked helical strips. This "wall" will serve as centrifugal-centripetal support (action-reaction) and helical guidance (turning and ascent) to other smaller particles that could reach higher (narrowing the original inverted cone into a cylindrical tube), even considering the vertical axis of spin could have particles so small that they are attracted to each other (being more or less diametrically opposite near the axis of spin). Don't FM waves propagate in a similar way?
@@copperNick-North There's no mention or observation of helical strings of particles in their paper, but they do mention ultralow frequency emissions of 3Hz to 30Hz are associated with dust devils. In other papers, Mars Global Surveyor has been used to detect dust devils with its onboard magnetometer and registered frequencies below 50Hz. They do mention the vertical separation of dust particles charged by triboelectric effects, which can produce a voltage difference estimated to be in the range of 0.8MV. Other papers tackle the ULF emissions and numerical modelling of dust devils such as "A model of the ULF magnetic and electric field generated from a dust devil" Farrell, 2006; "A simple model of the magnetic emission from a dust devil" Kurgansky, 2007 and "Magnetic signatures of dust devils on Mars", Luhmann, 2008.
What is the blue stone at 1:00?
I believe that's the tip of one of Ingenuity's feet.
Ingenuity's landing gear.
@@mcarp555 Thanks. I didn't know that it is bright blue.
@@UweKlosa It's not painted blue at all, it's black carbon fibre, thus highly reflective at certain viewing angles due to the carbon and resin combined properties. It gives off a blue tint where the reflection peaks.
I'm no conspiracy theorist but if Mars's atmosphere is really only 0.8% the pressure of Earth's then dust devils, wind and the ability for helicopters to fly would be impossible. Are the laws of physics different on Mars ?
I would like to second all the comments about your channel!
😅
Assuming you're seconding the nice comments, then thanks!
Ah ha !!!!! The Dust devils dug the shifting Mars canals we saw long ago when we made telescopes out of toilet paper tubes and coke bottle bottoms ...... Science isn't that hard really .......
So we've been wrong all these decades.. NOT little green men but large white poltergeists?
Ha!
Dust devils? .5 percent atmosphere? I think not.
...and yet, there they are!
You think wrong. In addition to dust devils there are sometimes planet wide dust storms. They have been observed.
@@johnhead1643 observed from earth not from the sketchy rover
@@jameywc2 What's your point?
@@chrisantoniou4366 point is obvious. I believe telescopic images vs. sketchy rover pics.
Easy to use Devon island landscape and put a red filter on the pic. Oops what is that lemming doing in the picture!?
I find you flash the images too fast and hard to follow. adding a small pause to allow to appreciate each image would really help i think. also, i sub'd your channel soley based on your scale overlays. these are so important i think you should have them in every image and if you can improve the overlay. maybe stable diffusion + control net could place an item right in the image with shadows etc. anyway thanks for the videos.
What exactly would stable diffusion accomplish here?
@@NavidIsANoob to get a real sense of scale with a real world object, you'd want to make it look like that object is actually on mars. lighting, shadows etc should match. stable diffusion in paint could do this.
@@Hermits99 And this is something that stable diffusion is able to generate? Do you have examples?
Thanks @Cameron Tofer for the sub. The images in the intro are shown only briefly, but then slowed down the second time. It's a balance between keeping the episodes crisp vs. lingering longer on each image.
The name is pronounced like "Yezeroh", btw. Please up your game, it will only benefit you and everyone else.
I'm pronouncing it like the mission team does, which doesn't seem to have been detrimental to their game.