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The environment of Mars is notoriously inhospitable. The temperature on Mars fluctuates violently throughout the day, with an average temperature of minus 80 degrees Fahrenheit. Most of its surface is covered with red dust, and the terrain is represented by craters, canyons and volcanoes. And its atmosphere is very thin, only about 1% of the density of the Earth.
Needless to say, measuring wind speeds on the red planet is challenging. Mars landers are already able to capture measurements, some measuring the rate at which heated materials cool as the wind blows, and others using cameras to image “stories” blowing in the wind. Both methods of wind speed measurement have yielded valuable insights into the Earth’s climate and atmosphere.
But there is still room for improvement in the astronomical toolshed, especially as plans to send astronauts to Mars unfold in the coming years.
In the Journal of the American Acoustic Society, researchers from Canada and the United States demonstrated a new acoustic wind speed measurement system that uses a pair of narrowband piezoelectric sensors to measure the travel time of sound pulses through the Martian air. The study took into account variables such as transducer diffraction effects and wind direction.
“By measuring the difference in sound travel time between forward and backward, we can accurately measure wind in three dimensions,” said author Robert White. “The two main advantages of this method are that it is fast and works well at low speeds.”
The researchers hope to be able to measure 100 wind speeds per second, with winds as low as 1 cm/s, which is in sharp contrast to previous methods, which can only record wind speeds about 1 per second and make it difficult to track wind speeds below 50 cm/s.
“By making fast and accurate measurements, we hope to be able to measure not only the mean wind, but also turbulence and pulsating winds,” White said. “This is important for understanding atmospheric variables that can cause problems for small spacecraft, such as the Clever helicopter that recently flew on Mars.”
Researchers characterized the ultrasonic transducers and sensors over a wide temperature range and a narrow pressure range of carbon dioxide, the main atmospheric gas on Mars. Through their choices, they showed that changes in temperature and pressure would only lead to a nominal error rate.
“The system we are developing will be 10 times faster and 10 times more accurate than anything we have used before,” White said. “We hope it will generate more valuable data when considering future Mars missions and provide useful information about the Martian climate, and perhaps have an impact on a better understanding of our planet’s climate.”
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Original text:https://phys.org/news/2024-08-anemometer-tracks-speedier-precise-mars.html
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