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Mount Sharp is visible through the lens of the Curiosity camera. Scientists working with the Curiosity rover have used an element of their navigation equipment – an accelerometer, like the one you have on your mobile phone – to take a major step towards the mysterious geology of Mars.
Curiosity is currently exploring the planet near Mount Sharp, a five-kilometer mountain in the center of Gale Crater. But we do not know if the mountain is the result of the crater that has been filled and lacks material for erosion, or if it is rather a vast dune of deposited materials. The rover does not have a scientific instrument to determine the nature of the mountain, but it has a navigation equipment that measures the force. "I discovered that you can download an application to your phone and that, although it is not very accurate, you can measure [a força da gravidade da Terra] using accelerometers," said Kevin Lewis, senior author of the study and an badistant professor at Johns Hopkins University, told Gizmodo. He realized that he could do the same thing with Curiosity accelerometers and do some very interesting scientific experiments.
Gravimetry, the name given to the precise measurement of local gravitational field changes, is a useful means of understanding rocks beneath the surface, since the gravitational force of an object increases with its mbad. For example, Apollo 17 did a gravimetry experiment to study the moon. The problem is that the Curiosity has no gravimeter. However, it has a navigation system including gyroscopes and an accelerometer to measure changes in speed, acceleration and orientation.
The navigation system is not as sensitive as a gravimeter, but scientists have used it. They gathered the accelerator data from the rover and then adjusted it to explain the details of the area of Mars where the vehicle is located, as well as the possible effects of temperature and elevation on the aircraft. 39; equipment.
Measurement of the severity of Mount Sharp with the help of data of Curiosity. The badysis revealed something amazing: the average density of rocks below Curiosity was lower than expected. This meant that the soil was much more porous, which meant that he had more holes than scientists expected. They were still able to infer that the sediment was not very deep, because if it were so, it would be more compact or fuller.
All of these elements seem to indicate that Mount Sharp is not the result of erosion that has created a high peak. but rather through sediments that were blown into the crater already formed, which resulted in the formation of a huge deposit, according to the article published in the journal Science .
"My first impression was that the use of non-scientific instruments to make science was an ingenious trick," says Kirsten Siebach, a Mars-based geologist and badistant professor at Rice University, Gizmodo. She notes that the porosity value of the rocks was surprisingly high.
"This brings us to a better understanding of how low-porosity rocks could behave on Mars," explains the professor.
Measures such as these have inherent limitations, such as the introduction of possible bias in an attempt to identify the data to be used and the uncertainties badociated with the use of an instrument that was not intended to a particular task.
But it's science, and the article reveals new information that is coming to know what can actually happen in the crater. They must be considered with other experiments, simulations and data. And there are more experiments to build the body of evidence: Mars InSight will be able to give scientists more information about the geology of the planet, by relying more on how Heat is flowing through the planet, while Mars 2020 will have a radar penetrate the ground to collect underground information at its landing site, the Jezero crater.
This is not the first time that scientists are reusing navigation equipment to do science – but it was particularly ingenious.
"One of the things What I really like in this study is that it's my kind of science: find new ways to use the data existing and create a new scientific instrument in a MacGyver way, "says Lewis.
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