At what point do we make something to sweep the dust off so they can keep going? This seems like it’s been a problem since the beginning. Surely by now we can make a broom work in space…?

Edit: spelling

There was a pretty good conversation recently on the engineering challenges behind something like that in another thread here : https://www.reddit.com/r/space/comments/yfa5pz/nasa_spacecraft_records_epic_marsquakes_as_it/

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If it were easy they'd be doing it already (NASA, CNSA, ESA). So far the cost/benefit of putting in the legwork to do all the R&D to figure it out hasn't seemed worth it. That'll change at some point in the near-future, no doubt, the questions are when and why. It also may be that there are not really great low mass solutions and the only things that work well are bulky and cumbersome, but ultimately we don't really know. We know that the most obvious solutions (like wipers or brushes) are probably not as workable as they seem at first blush.

Ultra thin sheets of protective film over the solar panels that can be pulled away/ejected? Even just one sheet would double the lifetime of the craft if we waited til now to actuate it. And if the operation failed it wouldn’t be any different to the current situation of not having it.

Someday a Martian archeologist is going to make a nice find for his museum

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Yea let’s pollute even more shit. And how many of these dumb ass sheets are you going to have before you run out?

How do you pull it away? What mechanism is used? How do you test that the sheet doesn't reduce the amount of light received? How do you test that the sheet doesn't increase the rate of buildup of dust? Once you get into the nitty gritty you find out it's a huge engineering problem with lots of costs and time associated with getting it even remotely right, which is why of the three organizations which have recently built Mars landers/rovers they've all decided it's not worth the investment of trying to mitigate dust build up, at least not yet.

Its a dead world. Theres no ecology being put at risk by the minute amount of derbris humanity has on mars

not sure why the replies to this comment are so pitiful. it's counter productive to squash brainstorming with belittling. there are ways to go about informing someone of the obstacles their idea would have to deal with, and acting holier-than-thou from the start without even offering a counter suggestion is not it, lol.

edit: yeah one of the ppl who replied to this made a 4 page essay here and then just called me a slur in my dms LMAO so the kind of people to disagree with this comment aren't worth the time or effort to argue with anymore

Although you experienced many roadblocks in your mission, you made successful pioneering contributions to our understanding of the geological activity of Mars.

You served well InSight

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What about compressed air? When cleaning my shop on a windy day, it’s always easier to blow the dust out with a compressor then try sweeping.

Sure, but then how are you going to make it work? You have to hit the whole panel, which probably means some kind of armature. That's not exactly trivial in terms of complexity, weight, etc. when you're talking about adding something to a spacecraft. And then anything like that you need to do testing on, already you're spending millions on something that may not work very well.

Missed opportunity to say "bites Martian dust."

Are you fucking serious?

What about the rest of the fucking rover lmao

Jumping the gun a bit there don't you think? Either way its far more likely that if there is present Martian life, its going to be underground so surface trash wont do anything, especially since its such a small amount compared to the size of a planet.

Wouldn't the ability to simply rotate the panels 180 degrees solve this issue?

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See you again when you get uncovered. Sleep tight for now.

It’s the brainstorming that’s pitiful.

I dont get why they dont a solar pannel compressor that blows away the dust through small nossles put around the pannel.Cant be so hard to do?

Mars air is carbon dioxide and it is compresseble like air on earth.

It would blow away the dust on the pannels.

EDIT:i saw looked it up on a Nasa site and they had have thought about it and other ideas.

they can do it with compressors driven by the change of tempature of night and day.

And there was ideas of wipers,drones blowing away the dust,tilting the panels,vibrating the panels with like phone vibrators but it said that they not going to put more effort in this because they going nuklear power in future.

Just google compressed air on solar panels rovers.

Personally my moneys still on the safer bets of the ice moons as opposed to life of any kind on mars beyond maybe the poles

Think fine dust buildup as opposed to normal sand you might find at a beach. Also the physical mechanism needs to change to be able to rotate the 180 (or even just 90 degrees) For Insight, the shape of the panels means I'm not actually sure there is sufficient ground clearance to rotate the panels.

Not mentioned, but using compressed air means either bringing said compressed air, or bring a compressor. Both require control mechanisms, and additional mass and volume that can't be used for science.

The martian atmosphere has a very low density, so you can't just use a normal compressor. And any compressor you bring is extra mass and volume you can't use for science. And you have to think about how a compressor running would impact sensitive instruments.

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It's not brainstorming though, it's just dismissiveness of a kind. It's trying to put forward this narrative that it's an easy problem, and it's not. If folks are serious about coming up with a solution to the problem, that's great, but it's unlikely to result from someone with no expertise in the field spending 30 seconds thinking about it and then moving on.

Which is what a lot of the pushback against those solutions illustrates, is the lack of depth of thinking about the problem that folks who "found a solution" exhibit. There are helpful suggestions and then there are half-assed unhelpful suggestions, and almost universally the "ideas" put forward by randos are the latter. Which is unfortunate, because there is value to collaboration and wide open problem solving, but this is not that.

Even more than that it's easy to see the root of these comments as fundamentally unhelpful. The starting assumption is that people are being stupid (across three separate national/international space programs) are missing something obvious, which comes about from this bias toward personal superiority and intelligence. Someone who was actually heavily invested in trying to help find a solution to the problem would start off by asking questions not proposing solutions. They would ask what the constraints are, what the full details of the problem are, what solutions have been investigated and found unsuitable, and so on. Instead you get people who just ride high on all of their assumptions and ignorance and don't even have the self-awareness to realize that's a problem. Is it smart to assume that Martian dust and Earth dust is identical with identical properties? Probably not, but it's a very common assumption by the solution havers. It's really easy to pretend that lazy, unhelpful advice is being made in good faith but it's generally not, and it's not being made with any level of thoughtfulness or effort behind it.

A good little comparison point here comes from the movie Pulp Fiction. In one scene a character, "The Wolf", is brought in to solve a problem, and the first thing they do is ask a bunch of questions to identify the scope and details of the situation, and then they proceed from there. That's just standard practice for any situation, even if you are a subject matter expert. You need to learn first then you can try proposing solutions. And if you aren't a subject matter expert (in, say, the design and operation of interplanetary spacecraft) then you should probably spend some time learning some details there as well. With that in mind, ask yourself what it would look like if someone really, truly was trying to be helpful in solving this problem, and if they put more than a few seconds of half-assed work into it, and then ask yourself how often you see comments of that nature that are actually thoughtful, informed, and potentially helpful.

If it weren't hard to do someone they'd be doing it. Three space programs have recently built Mars rovers/landers (NASA, CNSA, and ESA), and none of them have had automated dust removal systems. If it were easy you'd think at least one would do it. Logically the conclusion should be that it's not as easy as it seems.

> it’s unlikely to result from someone with no expertise in the field spending 30 seconds thinking about it and then moving on.

It’s Reddit….not an actual NASA board meeting. People don’t need permission to just throw out random thoughts. This doesnt lead to anything.

> The starting assumption is that people are being stupid […] which comes about from this bias toward personal superiority and intelligence

I’m kind of getting some projection vibes from this comment. You complain that someone would have the balls to have a random thought about how to clean the dust because they’re assuming people from different space agencies are stupid but then also say “well they’re not smart enough to think of a solution like this”.

You seem to be taking this all very seriously. I’m not sure who you are or what you do. But Reddit isn’t where NASA or ESA or SpaceX or whoever comes to for solutions. There’s literally no harm in anyone writing anything here as a fleeting thought. And to go ahead and write 4 paragraphs about why someone should feel bad about making a comment on a discussion forum is pretty silly.

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I can’t wait for operational Starship to put an end to planetary science mass insanity. Even if manned missions are still far away, they can finally just send a rugged machine with off the shelf parts.

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I’ve spent hours on power wash simulator cleaning this…. I have failed. Thank you for everything you have brought to us.

A broom?! All we have to do these days is fly a helicopter over it.

Assuming the cost estimates are actually close, that will definitely help. Although in some places (see high rad environment near Europa) you still wouldn't want COTS hardware. And some things like RTGs are probably never going to be available COTS.

Acronyms, initialisms, abbreviations, contractions, and other phrases which expand to something larger, that I've seen in this thread:

|Fewer Letters|More Letters| |-------|---------|---| |CNSA|Chinese National Space Administration| |COTS|Commercial Orbital Transportation Services contract| | |Commercial/Off The Shelf| |ESA|European Space Agency| |RTG|Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator|

^(4 acronyms in this thread; )^(the most compressed thread commented on today)^( has 28 acronyms.)
^([Thread #8256 for this sub, first seen 11th Nov 2022, 14:58]) ^[FAQ] ^([Full list]) ^[Contact] ^([Source code])

I wouldn't call this kind of thinking half-assed, but inexperienced. It's a whole new set of problems that people who haven't got the prerequisite knowledge probably wouldn't even consider, because these things never happen on earth.

We aren't in a brainstorming session though, and somebody trying to brainstorm while lacking 75% of the information of the problem is not helpful, just annoying. It's the typical reddit "wow these highly educated people are all idiots, I came up with an answer in 30sec"

No they can't.

The instruments aren't delicate for the fun of it. Sensitivity means fragility. Even sensitive instruments on earth are fragile.

Going to grab an RTG at home depo, for that matter? It seems you dont quite understand that Mars is not earth. The atmosphere is thin as hell and there is more dust than even in your bedroom. Off they shelf parts would get shredded by dust alone. I remind you that curiosity weights 1 ton and is the size of a car. The issue is not payload weight, it's how absurdly hostile Mars is. It's not beach sand.

"Planetary science mass insanity". I'm going to be blunt: you are an idiot. Not because you know less than the people doing this work. But because you fail to realize you know nothing, and choose to call it "mass insanity".

No one has provided a solid answer yet, just left replies saying 'that's dumb'. I am very far from an engineer or astronomer (if that's even the right field) - would you mind explaining why a removable film is a bad idea?

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it would require additional hardware to actually eject the film, which makes the craft heavier and creates more opportunities for technical conflict/ failure. ex. what if the film isn't applied properly and becomes "foggy", effectively making it a costly and ineffective addition? or the film catches on the craft itself causing issues with other systems? there is also concern about litter, although that is mostly a moral concern/ slippery slope argument as a few pieces of plastic on a planet is negligible. it could also be an ineffective solution if it doesn't remove the dust as well as intended. mars' sand isn't like earth sand; it's extremely fine and by nature more resistant to removal. there's a good chance the film could be ejected only to blow more sand on what it's protecting in the process if the aerodynamics is not accurately predicted. i'm not a scientist, but i'd guess static could play a big part here too. in any case, it would cost a lot of money, time, and research to make a functional film ejection system, which may piss off those financially invested in the project if it doesn't work. an issue like that could hinder future research. NASA is very careful about what they invest their time and money in, and has likely determined that the risk vs. benefit of a sand removal system is not in their favor. i don't think there's a good solution to this problem, but people tend to be creative and continuing a positive conversation about it may reveal one. :>

Thanks for the great answer! Woo science

You’ve got to chill the hell out. Besides, we’re talking about Mars. They’ve already sent commercial parts. The problem is that they couldn’t afford to use more durable structural pieces. Yes, like Curiosity as you said. The wheels were shredded because they were extremely thin. If they had the mass budget for solid steel wheels, more powerful motors, and a larger power source to compensate, that’s that problem dealt with. Engineers are more clever than you seem to think.

NASA has known for a long time about the problems caused by Martian dust. Couldn't they have built a solar panel cleaner for the InSight lander?

I don't get how some can possibly have a concern for "littering" a place that is huge, toxic, full of radiation, and possibly devoid of life. The only thing could be contamination with bacteria.

While that's true in most cases, it's not always true. There have been examples of inexperienced people proposing a solution to a problem that actually turned out to be better or correct. Two examples that come to my mind are:

• One person suggesting to Elon Musk on Twitter to light all the engines of Starship during landing and shutting off two of them. If any engine fails you don't choose it to be the one you rely on for landing.

• One guy accidentally proving a mathematical hypothesis in a thread about the anime The Melancholy of Harui Suzumiya on 4chan.

Quite funny, although these are, of course, exceptions.

Of course they're aware of the problem but by the time the dust takes its toll, they've already got a better, more precisely focused one on the drawing board, the older version virtually obsolete almost before it lands. Newly developed scientific questions and rapid tech development make it more economically acceptable to let the dust collect until the recyclers get there. 🧐

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The sharing of knowledge thru conversations and point-counterpoint is the purpose of r/space. But do you contributors really think you have a better comprehension of the problem than NASA's select experts? NASA engineering has certainly considered virtually all options and, bottom line, the problems with the solutions apparently outweigh the problem itself. The benefits of new tech development is best applied to replacement missions with new rovers equipped to answer new questions. 🤔🧐

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With Starship, weight will be less of an issue for future probes so maybe we can afford technology (and extra weight) to clean the solar panels in the near (within 10 years) future?

Well it seems like the Mars landers/rovers are managing to exceed design life enough that something to clean panels would probably be coming down the line eventually, and extra mass allowable certainly would make that easier.