We all know that Mars is one big ball of dust. It has become a problem for space equipment sent to the Red Planet as they are covered in it. With the high winds and low gravity, dust can easily travel from one place to the next, and researchers are looking into it to understand it better.

Martian Dust

Dust getting into electronics is never a good idea since it could damage them. For the Ingenuity helicopter, however, the problem lies with dust covering its solar panels. With dust covering it, only a limited amount of power can be drawn from the Sun.

Researchers are using the Mars helicopter to study how the dust moves in the air, its dynamics, and how future projects would be able to deal with the issue. Mainly, they observed how the dust reacts when the helicopter takes off, maneuvers, hovers, or lands.

Upon reviewing the video taken using the Perseverance's Mastcam-Z, the Ingenuity causes around four pounds of dust to fly around, which according to Digital Trends, is much more than what a helicopter on Earth would stir up.

Using the footage of the Perseverance rover, they measured the mass and size of the dust cloud caused by the Mars helicopter. Researcher Jason Rabinovitch said that when studying dust, there are things to consider like lower gravity, temperature, air density, and more.

With this study, space agencies can build equipment and robots that can survive the amount of dust circulating on Mars. They can make landings safer, which will be important for future Mars missions, especially future crewed missions. 

Read Also: NASA's Ingenuity Helicopter Flies with Martian Debris Stuck in Its Foot

How It Was Studied

The dust can be seen in raw video images from some of Ingenuity's flights. Researchers would process images to quantify dust lifting and behavior. With that, they can determine how much dust was there as well as study its motion by producing enhanced images.

According to the research, it was similar to the detection of dust devils, wherein it was required to create a mean frame, remove the mean frame from individual frames, and determine the optical depth from the mean and difference frames. The images will then be colorized to enhance visibility. 

Overall, the research observed dust lifting that occurred during take off, traverse, and landing phases between six helicopter flights. Dust lifting started to occur when the helicopter was 1.4 to 3.6 meters above ground and more "disturbed terrain" when the helicopter goes higher.

In four out of five traverse legs as high as five to six meters, the dust was studied away from the landing zone. A sediment mobilization model was used to determine estimates of wind friction velocity at the time of the dust lifting. 

It was found that in landings on undisturbed locations, dust lifting was similar to low-speed saltation models, which shows that sand may have been moved as well. It was also seen that disturbed locations produced dust with lower modeled speeds. 

Related: 5 Things You Need to Know About NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter