2021/11/03 by Rif Miles Olsen · 1 citation
Physics and Astronomy · #Planetary Science and Exploration
paper · doi:10.2514/6.2021-4037
openalex publication_date 2021/11/03 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/29
View Video Presentation: https://doi.org/10.2514/6.2021-4037.vid The idea of harvesting iron oxide from the top surfaces of the Meridiani Planum of Mars is presented. The main goal of such harvesting is to turn a small fraction of the iron oxide into steel infrastructure for scientific laboratories and scientific instruments (such as radio telescopes). The iron oxide is principally found in spherical concretions (and fragments of these) that are rich in grey-hematite (Fe 2 O 3 ) and that are widely and informally known as “blueberries.” Large numbers of these blueberries lie on top of soil bedforms across the Meridiani Planum. A review of the literature relevant to Martian blueberries, the Burns Formation, and the Meridiani Planum is given. This literature is large and detailed mainly due to the explorations and experiments performed by Opportunity, one of two of NASA’s Mars Exploration Rovers (MERs), that landed on Mars in 2004. The detailed knowledge of blueberries and their context presented in the review is important for understanding the practical actions needed to carry out blueberry harvesting. A short piece of data analysis is presented that finds the summed fractional area of the Meridiani Planum covered by small craters (with rim diameters between 5 m and 35 m) during the past 3.5 billion years to be close to 1. The main action of blueberry harvesting is simply to lift loose materials from the top layer (less than 1 cm thick) from soil bedforms (that rest on top of the Burns Formation of the Meridiani Planum) to a temporary holding place where these loose materials can be further processed. This action lifts blueberries, blueberry fragments, basaltic soils, also a meteoritic component to the soils (rich in magnetite and nickel), some blocks of crater ejecta made of Burns Formation sediment, and small amounts of non-sediment crater ejecta thrown great distances onto the Meridiani Planum. A first design for a blueberry harvester is presented. This first harvester is primarily intended to be operated on smooth sheet soil bedforms. These smooth sheet bedforms are very smooth, flat, and cover areas of many square kilometers: Smooth sheets are especially easy working environments for a harvester. The first harvester design lifts the top layer of loose materials to a trough using both a rotating drum with blades and guided ballistics. From the trough, the loose material can be moved higher using augurs. The given design raises the loose material a total of 1.5 m. At this height the loose materials are passed through two rotating sieves and across two magnetic separators, to separate basaltic soil and small blocks of sediment from the blueberry and meteoritic material, and deposit this high-iron content material into three, sized-classed, holding containers. The harvested blueberry and meteoritic materials are then passed from the holding containers to transport vehicles using augurs (in a similar fashion to combine harvesters of wheat).