Researchers claim that friction resulting from dry Martian dust making contact with each other can cause electrical discharge at the surface and in the planet's atmosphere.
However, they concluded in a paper in the journal Icarus that those sparks are likely to be tiny and pose little danger to potential robotic or human missions to the red planet.
IFLScience claimed that Viking landers observed silts, clays, wind-blown bedforms, and dust devils on Mars in the 1970s and orbiters since then, posing concerns about the possible electrical activity.
As shown by the recent tests, researchers say the low discharge energy on Mars means these effects are unlikely to impair the Perseverance rover and Ingenuity robotic helicopter's mechanical activities.
Nevertheless, the Jezero crater, the landing site for Perseverance, appears to suffer dust storms frequently in the autumn and winter. This can provide opportunities for further electrostatic phenomena studies, researchers said.
How Did The Scientists Prove That Martian Dusts Could Create Spark?
Scientists, per IGN, have attempted to determine experimentally whether big electric storms and lightning were feasible and whether there would be risks to static electricity generated by particles of the planet.
Volcanologist Professor Josef Dufek of the University of Oregon and his team developed a model of such storms using the nearest Earth resources. Icarus Dufek and co-authors report that discharges are likely to occur but are too weak to pose a great deal of risk. Martian atmosphere's restricted space could shield humans and our robot emissaries.
"We were interested in pursuing this work because of the number of new missions to Mars and the potential of constraining observations," Dufek said in a statement.
Joshua Méndez Harper, co-author of the report, said their experiments, and those of others before them, show that it is easy to get sparks on Mars when you mix up sand or dust. However, he acknowledged that it could be difficult to achieve very large discharges or conventional lightning, even in large dust storms.
Naturally, Dufek and Méndez Harper could not collect real Mars dust. But they noticed the parallels between what is there and pulverized basaltic ash from the 2000-year-old Xitle volcanic eruption in Mexico. These were swirled in eight millibars of carbon dioxide, reflecting the Martian atmosphere scarcely there, inside a glass tube large enough that the particles never reached the walls.
The findings are less analogous to terrestrial lightning and similar to the small-scale discharges of volcanic vents that occur on Earth, the paper concludes.
All of this indicates the substantial inaccuracy that exists in the otherwise technically credible book/film The Martian. Dust storms on Mars could be horrible for vision. Still, anything extreme enough to cause emergency evacuation is unlikely to be produced.
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