Parachute Blows in the Mars Wind

The parachute for the Mars Science Laboratory mission to Mars opened before launch. Photo by NASA/JPL-Caltech.

A newly released series of images snapped by NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter reveals that the Curiosity rover’s parachute has been flapping in the thin Martian wind.

Sure, this may seem hardly newsworthy — something to file under the why-should-I-care category — or a no-brainer. Wind moves fabric. Duh.

But it’s notable because scientists didn’t know if the wind on Mars was thick enough or gusty enough to have this effect. The parachute, by the way, is constructed mostly of nylon, with a patch of polyester in its reinforced center. If you remember, it’s what allowed the Curiosity rover to glide slowly down during landing and settle safely onto the Mars surface. Remember this picture?

“Nobody had a prediction on would this thing flap in the wind or not,” said Alfred McEwen, principal investigator for the MRO’s HIRISE camera. “It’s very thin air. What we can see from these images is it’s not moving all the time, it’s just in episodes. Occasionally there’s a strong gust of wind.”

Scientists do study wind on Mars. They study it to understand the planet’s active sand dunes and how they ebb and flow and evolve over time.

“There have been theories that the wind is so thin, it isn’t fast enough to move the sand,” McEwen said. “But apparently rare high velocity events are more common than previously known.”

It isn’t like the wind is picking the parachute up and plopping it somewhere else, he clarified. It’s mostly fixed in the same spot with the edges moving around.

This could also help explain why the Viking Lander 1 has remained visible on the Mars surface for nearly 40 years, unburied by dust in a dusty region of the planet, McEwen added. It landed on July 20, 1976, the same date — but seven years later — that Neil Armstrong landed on the moon.

QUICK BITES

• After entering the New Yorker caption contest almost weekly for five years, Roger Ebert won with this entry in April 2011.

• From Science NOW: “Unborn lizards can erupt from their eggs, days early if vibrations hint at a threat from a hungry predator, new research shows.”

• This video from the Christian Science Monitor shows the inside of the Florida sinkhole that swallowed and killed a man who was sleeping in his bedroom.

• Slate has this great shot of the Northern Lights with meteor streaking through.

• The life and times of Pregnant Great White Sharks. Researchers tracked several animals off the coast of Mexico and found that, after fertilization, they kept fairly close to their mating grounds, avoided male sharks, then returned to the same area to give birth. From LiveScience’s OurAmazingPlanet blog.

• Major Air Pollutants Increase in Beijing

• PopSci gives you nine reasons to yank out your sweet tooth.

NOT SAFE FOR LUNCH

• Why I Study Duck Genitalia. Read it. It’s fascinating. Here’s an excerpt:

Male ducks force copulations on females, and males and females are engaged in a genital arms race with surprising consequences. Male ducks have elaborate corkscrew-shaped penises, the length of which correlates with the degree of forced copulation males impose on female ducks. Females are often unable to escape male coercion, but they have evolved vaginal morphology that makes it difficult for males to inseminate females close to the sites of fertilization and sperm storage. Males have counterclockwise spiraling penises, while females have clockwise spiraling vaginas and blind pockets that prevent full eversion of the male penis.

Photo credit: Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., celebrate the landing of NASA’s Curiosity rover on Mars. Photo by NASA/JPL-Caltech.

Tom Kennedy, Rebecca Jacobson, Patti Parson and David Pelcyger contributed to this report.