NASA rover finds fine and ultrafine Mars dust on spacesuit samples
1 min readNASA said its Perseverance rover spent over 1,645 Martian days measuring fine and ultrafine dust particles clinging to spacesuit materials carried aboard the rover. Some were small enough to penetrate lungs and enter the bloodstream. The agency said the findings would be published Tuesday, Oct. 27, in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
Perseverance carried a set of five spacesuit material samples. Teflon and Vectran swatches were part of SHERLOC's calibration target. PIXL's calibration target held samples of Teflon and basaltic glass. Because PIXL cannot directly detect elements in Teflon, the X-ray spectrometer's signals came from dust resting on it.
PIXL detected fine particles measuring less than 2.5 micrometers and ultrafine particles around 100 nanometers. Particles on PIXL's Teflon target and SHERLOC's Vectran swatch averaged about 2 micrometers. Dust on PIXL's basaltic glass and SHERLOC's Teflon swatch ranged down to about 100 to 300 nanometers.
NASA said static electricity appeared to determine which dust sizes stuck to each surface. Different materials attracted grains of different sizes, and the finest particles remained attached through years of driving and drilling. Some materials held less dust than others, which could guide choices for spacesuits, habitats and protective coatings.
The findings could guide suitports, which let astronauts enter a suit attached to the outside of a habitat, and dual-chamber airlocks. NASA said such designs could reduce dust entering astronauts' living quarters. Results could also inform dust-exposure limits, safe habits and dust-removal methods for astronauts exploring Mars.
Scott VanBommel, a Perseverance scientist at Washington University in St. Louis and the paper's lead author, said the smallest particles posed the greatest challenge for human support systems. NASA said the PIXL results were the first on-site measurements of fine and ultrafine particles on Mars and could support future crew health standards.
