What's it like to be on Venus or Pluto? We studied their sand dunes and found some clues

[Still Waters]

What is it like to be on the surface of Mars or Venus? Or even further afield, such as on Pluto, or Saturn's moon Titan?

This curiosity has driven advances in space exploration since Sputnik 1 was launched 65 years ago. But we're only beginning to scratch the surface of what is knowable about other planetary bodies in the Solar System.

Our new study, published today in Nature Astronomy, shows how some unlikely candidates—namely sand dunes—can provide insight into what weather and conditions you might experience if you were standing on a far-off planetary body.

English poet William Blake famously wondered what it means "to see a world in a grain of sand."

In our research, we took this quite literally. The idea was to use the mere presence of sand dunes to understand what conditions exist on a world's surface.

https://theconversation.com/whats-it-like-to-be-on-venus-or-pluto-we-studied-their-sand-dunes-and-found-some-clues-181241

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41550-022-01669-0