1,645 days in Martian dust: the spacesuit swatches that came back barely scuffed

Strapped to NASA's Perseverance rover are small swatches of spacesuit material — fabric samples left out in the Martian weather for 1,645 days, so engineers can learn what the Red Planet's dust does to a suit before a person ever wears one there. The news, published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, is reassuring: the swatches showed little visible wear, suggesting Martian dust may be gentler — less abrasive and irritating — than the razor-sharp lunar dust that plagued Apollo astronauts. Fine dust still poses risks the team catalogues carefully. But for the designers of the first Mars suits, 'less hostile than feared' is exactly the headline they were hoping to read.

SDG 9 · Industry, innovation and infrastructure — Mechanism: tech innovation