Soil mechanics on the Moon, Mars, and Mulberry

From a soil mechanics point of view, the Moon is a relatively simple place. Without any water, organics, or clay minerals, the geotechnical properties of the lunar soil are confined to a fairly limited range. Furthermore, the major soil-forming agent is meteorite impact, which breaks the big particles into little particles; and simultaneously, cements the little particles back together again with molten glass. After about a hundred million years of exposure to meteorite impact, the distribution of particle sizes in the soil achieves a sort of steady state. The majority of the returned lunar soil samples have been found to be well-graded silty-sand to sandy-silt (SM in the Unified Soil Classification System). Each of the particle size distributions plots within a relatively narrow band, which appears to be uniform over the entire lunar surface. This further restricts the range of physical properties of the lunar surface. In contrast, Martian soils should exhibit an extremely wide range of properties. We already know that there is a small amount of water in the soil, greater than in the Martian atmosphere. Furthermore, the soil is suspected to be smectitic clay. That makes two out of the three factors that greatly affect the properties of terrestrial soils

Soil mechanical properties at the Apollo 14 site

The Apollo 14 lunar landing provided a greater amount of information on the mechanical properties of the lunar soil than previous missions because of the greater area around the landing site that was explored and because a simple penetrometer device, a special soil mechanics trench, and the modularized equipment transporter (Met) provided data of a type not previously available. The characteristics of the soil at shallow depths varied more than anticipated in both lateral and vertical directions. While blowing dust caused less visibility impairment during landing than on previous missions, analysis shows that eroded particles were distributed over a large area around the final touchdown point. Measurements on core-tube samples and the results of transporter track analyses indicate that the average density of the soil in the Fra Mauro region is in the range of 1.45 to 1.60 g/cm^3. The soil strength appears to be higher in the vicinity of the site of the Apollo 14 lunar surface experiments package, and trench data suggest that strength increases with depth. Lower-bound estimates of soil cohesion give values of 0.03 to 0.10 kN/m^2, which are lower than values of 0.35 to 0.70 kN/m^2 estimated for soils encountered in previous missions. The in situ modulus of elasticity, deduced from the measured seismic-wave velocity, is compatible with that to be expected for a terrestrial silty fine sand in the lunar gravitational field

Apollo 12 Soil Mechanics Investigation

During the sojourn of the second manned spacecraft on the moon in November 1969, the astronauts C. Conrad and A. Beau performed a number of tasks of interest from a soil mechanics point of view. They crossed the lunar surface, penetrating it with a variety of objects including core tube sampling devices, and visited an unmanned Surveyor spacecraft which had landed on and communicated from the moon 31 months previously. The mechanical behaviour of the lunar soil during these activities bas been analysed and is found to be consistent with the properties of a slightly cohesive medium dense granular soil (under lunar gravity) as deduced from previous Surveyor experiments. The grain size distribution and mechanical behaviour of the lunar soil samples which were brought back to Earth are also examined

Neutral Solar Wind Generated by Lunar Exospheric Dust at the Terminator

We calculate the flux of neutral solar wind observed on the lunar surface at the terminator due to solar wind protons penetrating exospheric dust grains with (1) radii greater than 0.1 microns and (2) radii greater than 0.01 microns. For grains with radii larger than 0.1 microns, the ratio of the neutral solar wind flux produced by exospheric dust to the incident ionized solar wind flux is estimated to be about 10^-4-10^-3 for solar wind speeds in excess of 800 km/s, but much lower (less than 10^-5) at average to slow solar wind speeds. However, when the smaller grain sizes are considered, this ratio is estimated to be greater than 10^-5 at all speeds, and at speeds in excess of 700 km/s reaches about 10^-3. These neutral solar wind fluxes are easily measurable with current low energy neutral atom instrumentation. Observations of neutral solar wind from the surface of the Moon would provide independent information on the distribution of very small dust grains in the lunar exosphere that would complement and constrain optical measurements at ultraviolet and visible wavelengths.Comment: in press in J. Geophys. Re

Guidelines for the use and interpretation of assays for monitoring autophagy (3rd edition)

In 2008 we published the first set of guidelines for standardizing research in autophagy. Since then, research on this topic has continued to accelerate, and many new scientists have entered the field. Our knowledge base and relevant new technologies have also been expanding. Accordingly, it is important to update these guidelines for monitoring autophagy in different organisms. Various reviews have described the range of assays that have been used for this purpose. Nevertheless, there continues to be confusion regarding acceptable methods to measure autophagy, especially in multicellular eukaryotes. For example, a key point that needs to be emphasized is that there is a difference between measurements that monitor the numbers or volume of autophagic elements (e.g., autophagosomes or autolysosomes) at any stage of the autophagic process versus those that measure fl ux through the autophagy pathway (i.e., the complete process including the amount and rate of cargo sequestered and degraded). In particular, a block in macroautophagy that results in autophagosome accumulation must be differentiated from stimuli that increase autophagic activity, defi ned as increased autophagy induction coupled with increased delivery to, and degradation within, lysosomes (inmost higher eukaryotes and some protists such as Dictyostelium ) or the vacuole (in plants and fungi). In other words, it is especially important that investigators new to the fi eld understand that the appearance of more autophagosomes does not necessarily equate with more autophagy. In fact, in many cases, autophagosomes accumulate because of a block in trafficking to lysosomes without a concomitant change in autophagosome biogenesis, whereas an increase in autolysosomes may reflect a reduction in degradative activity. It is worth emphasizing here that lysosomal digestion is a stage of autophagy and evaluating its competence is a crucial part of the evaluation of autophagic flux, or complete autophagy. Here, we present a set of guidelines for the selection and interpretation of methods for use by investigators who aim to examine macroautophagy and related processes, as well as for reviewers who need to provide realistic and reasonable critiques of papers that are focused on these processes. These guidelines are not meant to be a formulaic set of rules, because the appropriate assays depend in part on the question being asked and the system being used. In addition, we emphasize that no individual assay is guaranteed to be the most appropriate one in every situation, and we strongly recommend the use of multiple assays to monitor autophagy. Along these lines, because of the potential for pleiotropic effects due to blocking autophagy through genetic manipulation it is imperative to delete or knock down more than one autophagy-related gene. In addition, some individual Atg proteins, or groups of proteins, are involved in other cellular pathways so not all Atg proteins can be used as a specific marker for an autophagic process. In these guidelines, we consider these various methods of assessing autophagy and what information can, or cannot, be obtained from them. Finally, by discussing the merits and limits of particular autophagy assays, we hope to encourage technical innovation in the field