Plume Mitigation for Mars Terminal Landing: Soil Stabilization Project

<p>A sustained human presence on the Moon,&nbsp;Mars, or other celestial bodies, will require&nbsp;numerous disciplines to create technologies,&nbsp;solve current known problems, and anticipate&nbsp;new ones. One problem identified during the&nbsp;Apollo missions is plume ejecta: the expulsion of&nbsp;dust, regolith, or other loose material from&nbsp;the force of launch or landing.&nbsp; Rocket plume effects on Mars will be&nbsp;different from those on the Moon. Because Mars has an atmosphere, ejected particles will&nbsp;not travel as far, meaning that infrastructure&nbsp;could be placed at a safe distance from the&nbsp;launch pad and not receive blast effects.&nbsp;However, the presence of an atmosphere will&nbsp;cause the rocket exhaust to collimate, which&nbsp;will probably produce much deeper craters&nbsp;than the Apollo missions produced on the&nbsp;Moon.&nbsp;</p><p>Plume ejecta was observed and&nbsp;photographed during the recent landing of&nbsp;the Mars rover, Curiosity. Even though the&nbsp;sky crane landing system was designed to&nbsp;minimize plume effects on the Mars surface,&nbsp;areas of surface erosion were observed after&nbsp;landing. Curiosity is the largest&nbsp;vehicle that has landed on Mars. A human-sized&nbsp;lander will be considerably larger, will&nbsp;have more powerful rockets, and therefore,&nbsp;will probably disturb the surface soil much&nbsp;more. Deploying a landing pad or stabilizing&nbsp;the soil can mitigate this problem.</p><p>The goal of this project was to develop technology for building a landing pad through the following tasks:</p><ol><li>Demonstrate microwave sintering under Mars like conditions.</li><li>Investigate surface stabilization methods used for terrestrial applications and develop recommendations for a Mars landing pad based on these methods.</li><li>Develop a plan for implementing a microwave sintering system on a mobile rover.</li></ol><p>The project was completed successfully, achieving the first ever sintering of a Mars simulant under Mars like conditions.&nbsp; In addition, a design for a rover mounted sintering system was created.&nbsp; Recommendations for initial soil measurements were developed based of off terrestrial experience.</p>