Dust on Mars: Materials Adherence Experiment results from Mars Pathfinder

Author

Landis, Geoffrey A. ; Jenkins, Phillip P.

Author_Institution

Ohio Aerosp. Inst., NASA Lewis Res. Center, Cleveland, OH, USA

fYear

1997

fDate

29 Sep-3 Oct 1997

Firstpage

865

Lastpage

869

Abstract

Mars Pathfinder is the first solar-powered probe to operate on the surface of Mars. Pathfinder consists of a lander and a small, autonomous, six-wheel solar-powered rover, “Sojourner”. The Pathfinder spacecraft reflects NASA´s new philosophy of exploiting new technologies to reduce mission cost. The Materials Adherence Experiment on Pathfinder was designed to measure the degradation of solar arrays due to dust settling out of the atmosphere and blocking light to the solar array, lowering the array power output. The MAE measurements indicate steady dust accumulation at a rate of about 0.28% per day. This value is consistent with the performance of the solar arrays, which have decreased in power at an estimated rate of 0.29% per day

Keywords

Mars; dust; solar cell arrays; space power generation; Mars Pathfinder; Mars surface; Materials Adherence Experiment; NASA; Sojourner; array power output lowering; dust; solar arrays degradation; solar-powered probe; steady dust accumulation; Aircraft manufacture; Atmosphere; Atmospheric measurements; Costs; Degradation; Mars; Optical arrays; Power measurement; Probes; Space technology;

fLanguage

English

Publisher

ieee

Conference_Titel

Photovoltaic Specialists Conference, 1997., Conference Record of the Twenty-Sixth IEEE

Conference_Location

Anaheim, CA

ISSN

0160-8371

Print_ISBN

0-7803-3767-0

Type

conf

DOI

10.1109/PVSC.1997.654224

Filename

654224