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Mastcam color image showing tracks and hummocky plains terrain driven over on sol 344. Dark tracks are evident and interpreted to be due to the wheels pushing dust into the dark underlying basaltic sands. Wheel sinkage into the soil is minimal and estimated from Navcam and Hazcam stereo images. Both embedded and surface rock clasts are evident and strewn across the pavement-like surface. The bedded fractured surface can be seen in the left portion of the image. Mastcam image ML__428042260EDR_S0100000MCAM01396M.
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Physical properties of terrains encountered by the Curiosity rover during the first 360 sols of operations have been inferred from analysis of the scour zones produced by Sky Crane Landing System engine plumes, wheel touchdown dynamics, pits produced by ChemCam laser shots, rover wheel traverses over rocks, the extent of sinkage into soils, and the...
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... However, it should be noted that the image field of view differs greatly between the two cameras, and the area of erosion observed during MSL descent is larger than the entire field of view of the RDC. Analysis of surface erosion postlanding for MSL can be found in [35,36]. In Figs. 2 and 3, the markings (x) indicate the approximate location where the MLE nozzle centerlines would intersect the image plane, with the numbers corresponding to each specific MLE. ...
... Using this proposed correlation from [37] of affected area = 0.02 Thrust 1.5 (SI units), we get a predicted affected area for MSL Fig. 3 (left) of 0.02 m 2 ∕N 1.5 × 14; 050 N 1.5 33; 307 m 2 . This value is roughly a factor of 2 higher than the MSL-affected area reported in [36,37], which was determined based on MSL postlanding imagery. This discrepancy is expected and is likely because the spacecraft is still at a relatively high altitude in Fig. 3, and due to viscous and turbulent dissipation along with complex jet-jet interactions, the strength of the MLE plumes has decayed significantly by the time they interact with the surface. ...
... The sky crane is the most complicated mode because of its high landing accuracy and carrying capacity ( Figure 2c). This mode was adopted by the Curiosity (Arvidson et al., 2014) and Perseverance rovers (Pla-García et al., 2020). ...
... The maximum crater depth, average diameter, eroded volume, and average erosion rate were 10.67 cm, 224.03 cm, 84,671.96 cm 3 , and 4.27 kg/s, respectively (Arvidson et al., 2014). The next NASA Martian mission was InSight in 2018 ( Figure 8e). ...
The plume–surface interaction (PSI) is a common phenomenon that describes the environment surrounding the landers resulting from the impingement of hot rocket exhaust on the regolith of planetary bodies. The PSI will cause obscuration, erosion of the planetary surface, and high-speed spreading of dust or high-energy ejecta streams, which will induce risks to a safe landing and cause damage to payloads on the landers or to nearby assets. Safe landings and the subsequent scientific goals of deep-space exploration in China call for a comprehensive understanding of the PSI process, including the plume flow mechanics, erosion mechanism, and ejecta dynamics. In addition, the landing crater caused by the plume provides a unique and insightful perspective on the understanding of PSI. In particular, the PSI can be used directly to constrain the composition, structure, and mechanical properties of the surface and subsurface soil. In this study, we conducted a systematic review of the phenomenology and terrestrial tests of PSI: we analyzed the critical factors in the PSI process and compared the differences in PSI phenomena between lunar and Martian conditions; we also reviewed the main erosion mechanisms and the evolution and development of terrestrial tests on PSI. We discuss the problems with PSI, challenges of terrestrial tests, and prospects of PSI, and we show the preliminary results obtained from the landing crater caused by the PSI of Tianwen-1. From analysis of the camera images and digital elevation model reconstructions, we concluded that the landing of Tianwen-1 caused the deepest crater (depth > 40 cm) on a planetary surface reported to date and revealed stratigraphic layers in the subsurface of Martian soil. We further constrained the lower bounds of the mechanical properties of Martian soil by a slope stability analysis of the Tianwen-1 landing crater. The PSI may offer promising opportunities to obtain greater insights into planetary science, including the subsurface structure, mineral composition, and properties of soil.
... Laboratory tests (e.g., direct shear tests) are typically performed on a limited number of extracted samples (Germaine and Germaine, 2009). On Mars, geotechnical information has been inferred from trench excavations, rover tracks, and lander footpad penetrations (Moore et al., 1987;Rover Team, 1997;Moore et al., 1999;Arvidson et al., 2009;Shaw et al., 2009;Sullivan et al., 2011;Arvidson et al., 2014;Marteau et al., 2021;Marteau et al., 2022). Images of landslides, craters, and slopes have been back analyzed to determine minimum soil shear strength parameters for stability (Perko et al., 2002;Morgan et al., 2018). ...
... The Sojourner and Spirit rovers used the rover wheel as a device to identify cohesion and internal friction angle (Rover Team, 1997;Moore et al., 1999;Sullivan et al., 2011). Mechanical properties of terrains encountered by the Curiosity rover have been deduced from analysis of rover-wheel interactions, sinkage into soils, and the magnitude of slippage during drives (Arvidson et al., 2014). However, these previous experiments remained opportunistic, utilized equipment incapable of performing controlled geotechnical experiments, and, generally, their analysis reveals high uncertainties in the measurements. ...
... Visual feature detection for navigation is often insufficient to find adequate features in regolith. High-slip events and entrapment of the rovers are often experienced in terrains with unconsolidated sandy terrains [Arvidson et al., 2017, Toupet et al., 2019, Wilcox and Nguyen, 1998, Arvidson et al., 2014. Also, the majority of the visual odometry (VO) failures on Curiosity happened when the rover is at a sandy terrain with a few obvious unique features (66/94 by sol 2488) [Rankin et al., 2020]. ...
... Although the knowledge of Europa's surface is extremely limited, experiments for rover mobility purposes have been recently performed on salt-evaporites and icy terrains analogous to the Europa surface [Reid et al., 2020]. Similar to the visually imperceptible unconsolidated sands buried under the thin cover of basaltic sands on Mars [Arvidson et al., 2014], low-feature terrains on Europa are extremely challenging for visionbased systems and sparse features can degrade the perception performance leading to increased localization drift (see Figure 1(b)). Therefore, given that slip detection is only performed by VO-based methods in current rover operations [Toupet et al., 2019, Rankin et al., 2020, the concern for providing continuous slip detection significantly increases when visual-based systems are unavailable. ...
... Martian soil is exceptionally challenging for traversability; even throughout a single drive, Mars rovers traverse on various terrains with different slopes [Arvidson et al., 2014]. Although the Martian terrain is not flat and contains a variety of local obstacle types [Arvidson et al., 2017], the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover drives under the assumption of flat terrain if it does not run the Traction Control (TRCTL) algorithm, which is designed to reduce the rover wheel damage rate [Toupet et al., 2018, Toupet et al., 2019. ...
Slip detection is of fundamental importance for the safety and efficiency of rovers driving on the surface of extraterrestrial bodies. Current planetary rover slip detection systems rely on visual perception on the assumption that sufficient visual features can be acquired in the environment. However, visual-based methods are prone to suffer in perceptually degraded planetary environments with dominant low terrain features such as regolith, glacial terrain, salt-evaporites, and poor lighting conditions such as dark caves and permanently shadowed regions. Relying only on visual sensors for slip detection also requires additional computational power and reduces the rover traversal rate. This paper answers the question of how to detect wheel slippage of a planetary rover without depending on visual perception. In this respect, we propose a slip detection system that obtains its information from a proprioceptive localization framework that is capable of providing reliable, continuous, and computationally efficient state estimation over hundreds of meters. This is accomplished by using zero velocity update, zero angular rate update, and non-holonomic constraints as pseudo-measurement updates on an inertial navigation system framework. The proposed method is evaluated on actual hardware and field-tested in a planetary-analog environment. The method achieves greater than 92% slip detection accuracy for distances around 150 m using only an IMU and wheel encoders.
... Based on their color and shape (textures cannot be resolved) we interpret these clasts as exhumed remnants of a weakly-cohesive material or duricrust that rests below the sand-dominated granular surface. Weakly-cohesive, mm to cm thick encrustations on the surface of dusty and/or sandy materials have been identified across Mars in orbital thermal data (Christensen et al., 2001;Christensen & Moore, 1992;Jakosky & Christensen, 1986) and by multiple landers (Arvidson et al., 1989;Arvidson et al., 2010;Arvidson et al., 2014;Binder et al., 1977;Cabrol et al., 2006;Golombek et al., 2006Golombek et al., , 2008Herkenhoff et al., 2008;Jones et al., 1979;Moore et al., 1999;Mutch et al., 1977;Weitz et al., 2020). Chemical Figure 18. ...
... The results suggest an angle of internal friction of 30°-35° and a cohesion of 2-14.5 KPa (Marteau et al., 2021). The cohesion values are consistent with weakly to more strongly cohesive sandy soils, with the upper limit slightly exceeding soil cohesion values for other landing sites on Mars (e.g., Arvidson et al., 2014;Golombek et al., 2008;Herkenhoff et al., 2008;Moore et al., 1999). ...
The InSight lander rests on a regolith‐covered, Hesperian to Early Amazonian lava plain in Elysium Planitia within a ∼27‐m‐diameter, degraded impact crater called Homestead hollow. The km to cm‐scale stratigraphy beneath the lander is relevant to the mission's geophysical investigations. Geologic mapping and crater statistics indicate that ∼170 m of mostly Hesperian to Early Amazonian basaltic lavas are underlain by Noachian to Early Hesperian (∼3.6 Ga) materials of possible sedimentary origin. Up to ∼140 m of this volcanic resurfacing occurred in the Early Amazonian at 1.7 Ga, accounting for removal of craters ≤700 m in diameter. Seismic data however, suggest a clastic horizon that interrupts the volcanic sequence between depths of ∼30 and ∼75 m. Meter‐scale stratigraphy beneath the lander is constrained by local and regional regolith thickness estimates that indicate up to 10–30 m of coarse‐grained, brecciated regolith that fines upwards to a ∼3 m thick loosely‐consolidated, sand‐dominated unit. The maximum depth of Homestead hollow, at ∼3 m, indicates that the crater is entirely embedded in regolith. The hollow is filled by sand‐size eolian sediments, with contributions from sand to cobble‐size slope debris, and sand to cobble‐size ejecta. Lander‐based observations indicate that the fill at Homestead hollow contains a cohesive layer down to ∼10–20 cm depth that is visible in lander rocket‐excavated pits and the HP³ mole hole. The surface of the landing site is capped by a ∼1 to 2 cm‐thick loosely granular, sand‐sized layer with a microns‐thick surficial dust horizon.
... Visual feature detection for navigation is often insufficient to find adequate features in regolith. High-slip events and entrapment of the rovers are often experienced in terrains with unconsolidated sandy terrains (Arvidson et al., 2014(Arvidson et al., , 2017Toupet et al., 2020a;Wilcox and Nguyen, 1998). Also, the majority of the visual odometry (VO) failures on Curiosity happened when the rover was at a sandy terrain with a few obvious unique features (66/94 by sol 2488) (Rankin et al., 2020). ...
... Although the knowledge of Europa's surface is extremely limited, experiments for rover mobility purposes have been recently performed on salt evaporites and icy terrains analogous to the Europa surface (Reid et al., 2020). Similar to the visually imperceptible unconsolidated sands buried under the thin cover of basaltic sands on Mars (Arvidson et al., 2014), low-feature terrains on Europa are extremely challenging for vision-based systems and sparse features can degrade the perception performance, leading to increased localization drift (see Figure 1(b)). Therefore, given that slip detection is only performed by VO-based methods in current rover operations (Toupet et al., 2020a;Rankin et al., 2020), the concern for providing continuous slip detection significantly increases when visual-based systems are unavailable. ...
... Martian soil is exceptionally challenging for traversability; even throughout a single drive, Mars rovers traverse on various terrains with different slopes (Arvidson et al., 2014). Although the Martian terrain is not flat and contains a variety of local obstacle types (Arvidson et al., 2017), the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover drives under the assumption of flat terrain if it does not run the Traction Control (TRCTL) algorithm, which is designed to reduce the rover wheel damage rate (Toupet et al., 2018(Toupet et al., , 2020a. ...
Slip detection is of fundamental importance for the safety and efficiency of rovers driving on the surface of extraterrestrial bodies. Current planetary rover slip detection systems rely on visual perception on the assumption that sufficient visual features can be acquired in the environment. However, visual-based methods are prone to suffer in perceptually degraded planetary environments with dominant low terrain features such as regolith, glacial terrain, salt evaporites, and poor lighting conditions such as dark caves and permanently shadowed regions. Relying only on visual sensors for slip detection also requires additional computational power and reduces the rover traversal rate. This paper answers the question of how to detect wheel slippage of a planetary rover without depending on visual perception. In this respect, we propose a slip detection system that obtains its information from a proprioceptive localization framework that is capable of providing reliable, continuous, and computationally efficient state estimation over hundreds of meters. This is accomplished by using zero velocity update, zero angular rate update, and non-holonomic constraints as pseudo-measurement updates on an inertial navigation system framework. The proposed method is evaluated on actual hardware and field tested in a planetary-analog environment. The method achieves greater than 92% slip detection accuracy for distances around 150 m using only an inertial measurement unit and wheel encoders.
... At the same time, the soil cohesion of the Tianwen-1 site is relatively high, resulting in soil adhering to the wheel surface during the traverse (Extended Data Fig. 4e). Compared with the soil shearing properties in other Mars missions [22][23][24][25][26][27][28] , the in situ results of Tianwen-1 are within the envelop region of the others and closest to that of the Viking 1 and Curiosity rover sites (Fig. 3c). ...
China’s Mars rover, Zhurong, touched down on Utopia Planitia in the northern lowlands of Mars (109.925° E, 25.066° N) in May 2021, and has been conducting in situ investigations of the landing area in conjunction with the Tianwen-1 orbiter. Here we present surface properties derived from the Zhurong rover’s traverse during the first 60 sols of rover operations. Our analysis of the rover’s position from locomotion data and camera imagery over that time shows that the rover traversed 450.9 m southwards over a flat surface with mild wheel slippage. Soil parameters determined by terramechanics, which observes wheel–terrain interactions, indicate that the topsoil has high bearing strength and cohesion. The soil’s equivalent stiffness is estimated to range from 1,390 to 5,872 kPa per mN, and the internal friction angle ranges from 21° to 34° under a cohesion of 1.5 to 6 kPa. Aeolian bedforms in the area are primarily transverse aeolian ridges, indicating northeastern local wind directions. Surface rocks imaged by the rover cameras show evidence of physical weathering processes, such as wind erosion, and potential chemical weathering processes. Joint investigations utilizing the scientific payloads of the rover and the orbiter can provide insights into local aeolian and aqueous history, and the habitability evolution of the northern lowlands on Mars.
... The Viking 1 and Viking 2 landers took powdery samples with their special scoop flown on the mechanical arms. The Sojourner rover used several approaches, such as the wheel trenching technique, to monitor the electrical current and capture high-quality photographs of the dug pit to calculate the geotechnical properties of the regolith [77]. Currently, in October 2021, the InSight rover is acquiring geotechnical data of the Martian regolith through a mobile penetrometer (Mole) which was designed to penetrate into the subsurface rock up to the depth of 5 m [78]. ...
From the 2000s onwards, unprecedented space missions have brought about a wealth of novel investigations on the different aspects of space geomechanics. Such aspects are related to the exploratory activities such as drilling, sampling, coring, water extraction, anchoring, etc. So far, a whole range of constitutive research projects on the plate tectonics, morphology, volcanic activities and volatile content of planetary bodies have been implemented. Furthermore, various laboratory experiments on extraterrestrial samples and their artificial terrestrial simulants are continually conducted to obtain the physical and mechanical properties of the corresponding specimens. Today, with the space boom being steered by diverse space agencies, the incorporation of geomechanics into space exploration appreciably appears much needed. The primary objective of this article is to collate and integrate the up-to-date investigations related to the geomechanical applications in space technologies. Emphasis is given to the new and future applications such as planetary drilling and water extraction. The main impetus is to provide a comprehensive reference for geoscience scientists and astronauts to quickly become acquainted with the cutting-edge advancements in the area of space geomechanics. Moreover, this research study also elaborates on the operational constraints in space geomechanics which necessitate further scientific investigations.
... Despite widespread sand motion at this location, active dust devils have not been reported since landing (Moores et al., 2015;Streakley & Murphy 2016). Given that at least some dust is available at the surface (e.g., Arvidson et al., 2014), and unless the paucity of imaged dust devils is an observational bias , it would be intuitive to conclude that vortex pressure excursions need to be >3 Pa (the maximum drop recorded from MSL REMS) to lift material (Kahanpaa et al., 2016). In fact, prior to the InSight mission pressure drops above 3 Pa had rarely been recorded on the surface of Mars (Ellehoj et al., 2010;Murphy & Nelli, 2002). ...
Geologic and climatic processes on modern‐day Mars are heavily influenced by aeolian surface activity, yet the relationship between atmospheric conditions and sediment mobilization is not well understood. The Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy, and Heat Transport (InSight) spacecraft is uniquely able to address this issue, due to its joint imaging and continuous high‐frequency meteorological capabilities, which allow for direct comparison between surface activity and atmospheric conditions. Since landing in the volcanic plains of Elysium Planitia, InSight's camera's have recorded intermittent, small‐scale surface changes, including removal of fine material on the lander footpad, linear tracks and localized surface darkening caused by minor dust removal, and surface creep of granules, as presented in Part 1 (Charalambous et al., 2021, this issue). Surface activity is found to correlate well with the timing of abrupt pressure drops (ΔP ∼ 1–9 Pa) and transient wind gusts (v ∼ 14–31 m/s) associated with convective vortex passage. Here we identify the major erosive forces acting on surface particles during these events, including the vertical pressure gradient force at the vortex core and the drag force generated by quickly‐rotating tangential winds. Orbital and ground‐truth data suggest that aeolian activity at InSight's landing site is sporadic under modern climatic conditions. Ongoing aeolian surface modifcation is driven primarily by turbulent vortices that sporadically lift dust and redistribute coarser sediment (i.e., sand and granules) but do not aid in the development of organized aeolian bedforms. Surface erosion is localized within the path these vortices take across the surface which is controlled by seasonally‐reversing background circulation patterns.
... Knowledge of the terrain geometry is a critical asset for the rovers in unknown environments for safe traversal. For example, MSL uses stereo vision to generate a digital elevation map (DEM) of the surrounding terrain enhanced by leveraging High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) images [14] similar to Mars Exploration Rovers (MERs) [2]. VO is an accurate and reliable source of information for slip estimation; however, it is computationally expensive for planetary rovers. ...
... Martian soil is extremely challenging for traversability; even throughout a single drive, Mars rovers traverse various terrains [14]. Employing a terramechanics model to estimate slip requires the knowledge of terrain parameters and variables, which are challenging to measure or estimate accurately online. ...
The zero-velocity update (ZUPT) algorithm provides valuable state information to maintain the inertial navigation system (INS) reliability when stationary conditions are satisfied. Employing ZUPT along with leveraging non-holonomic constraints can greatly benefit wheeled mobile robot dead-reckoning localization accuracy. However, determining how often they should be employed requires consideration to balance localization accuracy and traversal rate for planetary rovers. To address this, we investigate when to autonomously initiate stops to improve wheel-inertial odometry (WIO) localization performance with ZUPT. To do this, we propose a 3D dead-reckoning approach that predicts wheel slippage while the rover is in motion and forecasts the appropriate time to stop without changing any rover hardware or major rover operations. We validate with field tests that our approach is viable on different terrain types and achieves a 3D localization accuracy of more than 97% over 650 m drives on rough terrain.
