5 ms·

It might have been clumpier than all the mars emulation soil that NASA tested the equipment with.

• mjevans 7y ago
  Setting up an artificial Mars would involve different gravity, air pressure, atmosphere composition, and the weathering patterns of the material are probably difficult to predict. Most of the reason to send a probe somewhere is to learn more about it, so I assume the only knowledge was sparse and possibly inaccurate educated guesses based on other data. That's also probably a good reason to send up a wider tolerance, but less useful design first and follow up with a more targeted design that can do more as a revision on the product. Budgets are probably the reason to not do that.
  • zaarn 7y ago
    There is commercial soil available that mimics the conditions of martian soil fairly well. Gravity can be emulated by hanging the device from a spring (which you can optionally adjust to always take X newtons of force via a computer controller). Atmosphere and weathering can be simulated in a vacuum chamber. All those things can be put into a vacuum chamber to simulate low pressure. This is how NASA is developing their drone for the upcoming missions that will fly on mars and other celestial bodies.