A Pre-Landing Assessment of Regolith Properties at the InSight Landing Site

This article discusses relevant physical properties of the regolith at the Mars InSight landing site as understood prior to landing of the spacecraft. InSight will land in the northern lowland plains of Mars, close to the equator, where the regolith is estimated to be ≥3--5 m thick. These investigations of physical properties have relied on data collected from Mars orbital measurements, previously collected lander and rover data, results of studies of data and samples from Apollo lunar missions, laboratory measurements on regolith simulants, and theoretical studies. The investigations include changes in properties with depth and temperature. Mechanical properties investigated include density, grain-size distribution, cohesion, and angle of internal friction. Thermophysical properties include thermal inertia, surface emissivity and albedo, thermal conductivity and diffusivity, and specific heat. Regolith elastic properties not only include parameters that control seismic wave velocities in the immediate vicinity of the Insight lander but also coupling of the lander and other potential noise sources to the InSight broadband seismometer. The related properties include Poisson’s ratio, P- and S-wave velocities, Young’s modulus, and seismic attenuation. Finally, mass diffusivity was investigated to estimate gas movements in the regolith driven by atmospheric pressure changes. Physical properties presented here are all to some degree speculative. However, they form a basis for interpretation of the early data to be returned from the InSight mission.Additional co-authors: Nick Teanby and Sharon Keda

Coping in construction: Female students' perspectives

All parts of the construction industry are quantitatively and hierarchically male-dominated. In response to widespread calls for greater diversity within the sector, a number of government initiatives have been introduced to encourage women to pursue engineering degree courses, including construction programmes. Women represent the most significant group of untapped potential for the UK construction sector and so their recruitment and retention in the industry is vital for its future prosperity. This paper reports on part of an ESRC funded study exploring the impact of women construction students' workplace experiences on their career intentions. Workplace experiences are examined in the form of the year long industrial placement, as this is usually women's first major contact with the construction industry. The industrial placement also represents a key transitional stage in each student's process of becoming a construction professional (or not). Specifically, the research presented uses qualitative interviews with female construction students on industrial placement to analyse how women manage their integration into the industry, and the coping strategies women adopt. The paper concludes by explaining how the findings will be built upon in future stages of the research, in which a practical guidance document identifying initiatives to improve women's careers in construction will be developed for industry employers