English

NASA plans to use lasers to measure the impact of exhaust gases on the lunar surface during landing, in order to plan lunar landings more effectively

96
2023-10-31 11:08:22
See translation

Recently, NASA's official website showed that a research team at the University of Central Florida has tested an instrument called Ejecta STORM, which aims to measure the size and velocity of surface particles generated by exhaust gases from rocket powered landers on the moon or Mars.

According to NASA, when a spacecraft lands on the moon or Mars, rocket exhaust plumes can produce efflorescent ejecta (abrasive dust and rapidly moving large particles) that may damage the lander and surrounding structures. Understanding how the exhaust of rocket engines affects the ejectors will help task designers model soil erosion rate, particle size distribution, and velocity related to plume surface interactions, thereby more effectively planning lunar landings.

To meet this demand, researchers at the University of Central Florida have developed a laser instrument called Ejecta STORM (Sheet Tracking, Opacity, and Regolith Material). The four tethered flights allowed researchers to test the integration of the system with the lander and simulate the operation under flight conditions of the lunar lander plume effect. These tests are based on data collected during flight activities conducted using Xiaodac in 2020.

Researchers hope that this technology can provide information for model development and reduce the risk of future lunar landings, ultimately improving the design of planetary science missions based on rovers, manned lunar and other celestial missions, and on-site resource utilization missions.

Source: Sohu

Related Recommendations
  • New technology can efficiently heal cracks in nickel based high-temperature alloys manufactured by laser additive manufacturing

    Recently, Professor Zhu Qiang's team from the Department of Mechanical and Energy Engineering at Southern University of Science and Technology published their latest research findings in the Journal of Materials Science. The research team has proposed a new process for liquid induced healing (LIH) laser additive manufacturing of cracks. By controlling micro remelting at grain boundaries to introdu...

    2024-03-15
    See translation
  • Snapmaker introduces new 20W and 40W laser modules

    Snapmaker has opened pre-orders for 20W and 40W laser modules, which are significant upgrades to the modules available on existing Snapmaker machines.Snapmaker says that with the 40W module installed, you will be able to cut 15 mm basswood plywood at a time at a speed of 20 mm/SEC. With 20W, you will cut 10mm at a rate of 10mm/SEC. That's a lot more than Artisan and Snapmaker 2.0 - both are comp...

    2023-08-04
    See translation
  • Coherent launches 12 kW sheet metal laser cutting processing head

    Recently, Coherent, an industrial laser technology giant, announced the launch of a new 2D laser cutting head - CUT12, which combines excellent performance, high versatility, and profound value for the global flat cutting market. Image source: CoherentThe CUT12 sheet metal laser cutting processing head is perfectly compatible with fiber lasers in the power range of 4 kW-12 kW (continuous wave),...

    2024-10-29
    See translation
  • Topcon Announces the Launch of LN-50 3D Laser

    Earlier this month, before the annual Intergeo conference held in Germany, Topcon Positioning Systems announced the latest member of its robot total station series. This California based company launched the LN-50 3D laser in early October, marking their latest layout navigator, which has a range of 50 meters.They pointed out that this latest scanner is specifically designed for homebuilders, mech...

    2023-10-25
    See translation
  • Scientists use tiny nitrogen defects in the atomic structure of diamonds as "color centers" to write data for storage

    Scientists at the City University of New York use tiny nitrogen defects in the atomic structure of diamonds as "color centers" to write data for storage. This technology is published in the journal Nature Nanotechnology and allows for encoding multiple bytes of data into the same nitrogen defect at multiple optical frequencies, without confusing the information content.The common laser based techn...

    2023-12-07
    See translation