Dr. Mark A. Garlick, Dust Storm on Mars

摘要

The Martian environment poses many challenges to those who explore it. Temperature, radiation, and a lack of water or atmosphere are problems that threaten future human explorers more than our robotic emissaries, but massive storms of dust are a danger to robots and humans alike. Martian dust storms can last for weeks on end, sometimes cloaking the entire planet in a haze. The dust can coat a robot's solar panels, starving it of energy and potentially ending its mission. This was the fate of NASA's Opportunity rover, which couldn't survive a planet-wide dust storm in 2018.