The glass just has high angularity like the other particles it comes from so while in and of itself it isn’t useful, highly angular particles make for better interlocking when made into cements.

And I don’t think they’re as worried about the depth of the dust in the highlands but it definitely makes exploring craters on foot impossible with the regolith present. You could absolutely get buried in it if the depth of the dust is 10m deep in some spots. We have a lot of concerns with the dust and how we can make long term survivable hardware which is part of what I worked on.

[–] MaggiWuerze 1 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

but it definitely makes exploring craters on foot impossible with the regolith present

But the rovers with their oversized wheels are fine?

[–] CleoTheWizard@lemmy.world 3 points 2 months ago (2 children)

Theres some cool reasons behind that and I encourage you to look into it but the summary is that a lot of our rovers use those oversized wheels so they don’t sink and instead spread their weight over the top of it. The regolith does get more compact as you go down, so that also helps prevent sinking all the way to the bottom.

The other part is that both for rovers and astronauts we map out areas of high risk and avoid them. The Apollo astronauts landed in a specific spot and had certain areas to explore for that exact reason.

Then when it comes to the LRV (the moon buggy) that we brought up there, that thing has very lightweight tires that are essentially just mesh wire. Helps to spread the load and they deform easily to get better traction in the loose rock.

I had the pleasure of handling engineering replicas of the tires on the LRV and also newer generation martian rover tires. Including another engineering sample of the wheels on perseverance. NASA has a giant soil bin with a material that mimics the regolith that they use to test those wheels to prevent the rovers from sinking. Basically just attaching the wheels to a fake rover rig, loading it with weights, and then they drive it and track it in real time 3D space to measure slip and sinkage and all that.

[–] MaggiWuerze 2 points 2 months ago* (last edited 2 months ago) (1 children)

Very cool that you were able to handle these. Definetly envious :D
Thanks for the insights

[–] CleoTheWizard@lemmy.world 1 points 2 months ago

Definitely one of the highlights of being there, and you’re welcome!

[–] brbposting@sh.itjust.works 1 points 2 months ago

So cool!