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An Investigation of the Mechanical Properties of Some Martian Regolith Simulants with Respect to the Surface Properties at the InSight Mission Landing Site

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An Erratum to this article was published on 10 July 2017

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Abstract

In support of the InSight mission in which two instruments (the SEIS seismometer and the \(\mbox{HP}^{3}\) heat flow probe) will interact directly with the regolith on the surface of Mars, a series of mechanical tests were conducted on three different regolith simulants to better understand the observations of the physical and mechanical parameters that will be derived from InSight. The mechanical data obtained were also compared to data on terrestrial sands. The density of the regolith strongly influences its mechanical properties, as determined from the data on terrestrial sands. The elastoplastic compression volume changes were investigated through oedometer tests that also provided estimates of possible changes in density with depth. The results of direct shear tests provided values of friction angles that were compared with that of a terrestrial sand, and an extrapolation to lower density provided a friction angle compatible with that estimated from previous observations on the surface of Mars. The importance of the contracting/dilating shear volume changes of sands on the dynamic penetration of the mole was determined, with penetration facilitated by the \(\sim1.3~\mbox{Mg/m}^{3}\) density estimated at the landing site. Seismic velocities, measured by means of piezoelectric bender elements in triaxial specimens submitted to various isotropic confining stresses, show the importance of the confining stress, with lesser influence of density changes under compression. A power law relation of velocity as a function of confining stress with an exponent of 0.3 was identified from the tests, allowing an estimate of the surface seismic velocity of 150 m/s. The effect on the seismic velocity of a 10% proportion of rock in the regolith was also studied. These data will be compared with in situ data measured by InSight after landing.

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  • 10 July 2017

    An erratum to this article has been published.

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Acknowledgements

This work has been supported by CNES (the French space agency) and Ecole des Ponts ParisTech, within the frame of the SEIS/InSight project activities. The second author acknowledges the financial support of his Ph.D. provided by both the UnivEarthS Labex program at Sorbonne Paris Cité (ANR-10-LABX-0023 and ANR-11-IDEX-0005-02) and the SODERN company. Authors also acknowledge the support of NASA-JPL (T. Hudson) and DLR (M. Grott) for providing the Mars simulant samples and for their support to InSight activities. They also wish to thank J.M. Plessier, from Ecole des Ponts ParisTech, for his help in providing the optical microscope photos of the regoliths. This is InSight Contribution no. 21.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Ecole des Ponts ParisTech, Laboratoire Navier (CERMES), Paris, France

    Pierre Delage, Amine Dhemaied, Malik Belmokhtar, Emmanuel De Laure, Jean-Claude Dupla & Yu Jun Cui

  2. Institut de Physique du Globe de Paris-Sorbonne Paris Cité, Université Paris Diderot, Paris, France

    Foivos Karakostas & Philippe Lognonné

  3. Jet Propulsion Laboratory, NASA – California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, USA

    Matt Golombek, Ken Hurst, Sharon Kedar & Bruce Banerdt

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  1. Pierre Delage
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  2. Foivos Karakostas
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  3. Amine Dhemaied
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  4. Malik Belmokhtar
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  5. Philippe Lognonné
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  6. Matt Golombek
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  7. Emmanuel De Laure
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  8. Ken Hurst
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  9. Jean-Claude Dupla
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  10. Sharon Kedar
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  11. Yu Jun Cui
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  12. Bruce Banerdt
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Correspondence to Pierre Delage.

Additional information

This article has been updated because during article processing an error occurred in one of the author’s names. The author’s name “Sharon Kedar” has been corrected in this article and should be regarded as final version by the reader.

An erratum to this article is available at https://doi.org/10.1007/s11214-017-0398-9.

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Delage, P., Karakostas, F., Dhemaied, A. et al. An Investigation of the Mechanical Properties of Some Martian Regolith Simulants with Respect to the Surface Properties at the InSight Mission Landing Site. Space Sci Rev 211, 191–213 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11214-017-0339-7

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