Space exploration engineers are taking inspiration from hang gliders to develop a new space vehicle that could help deliver smaller probes to explore the parts of Mars that larger rovers cannot reach.
The Planetary Science Institute (PSI) is working with Aerospace Corp. and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to develop MARSDROP, a small vehicle that would hitchhike on a larger spacecraft to deliver small landing probes, also known as microprobes, to areas that are unreachable by larger probes.
The microprobes, a prototype version of which has taken its test flight and landing in the desert of Nevada, are designed to enter the Martian atmosphere at a speed of seven kilometers per second, only opening a parachute at three minutes into entry to slow them down to 7.5 meters per second before releasing the steerable parawings that enables scientists to direct the gliders to a specific landing position by using terrain-relative video navigation.
"This MARSDROP capability opens up a number of very interesting, previously unreachable sites for surface-based investigations," says Rebecca Williams, senior scientist at PSI.
Because of the size and navigability of these microprobes, they can easily go to places that bigger rovers cannot reach, such as the canyons in Valles Marineris, the geologically active geysers in the Martian south poke and other areas that could possibly provide evidence of water on the Red Planet.
"This provides the opportunity to tackle a range of science questions that aren't possible in the near-term with existing landing site restrictions," Williams says. "With MARSDROP, we can exploit the excess mass capability on the cruise-stage vehicle to enhance the science return from each mission."
With a capsule that spans about 12 inches and can carry around two pounds of equipment, the MARSDROP probes can carry cameras, microscopes and a variety of sensors such as seismometers and weather sensors to detect the possibility of minerals important to human life and characterize environmental hazards, both of which are essential if humanity is going to establish a colony on Mars in the future.
"MARSDROP can help lay the groundwork for future human exploration of Mars by characterizing biohazards like Martian dust and assessing the availability of key resources, such as water from which oxygen and rocket propellant can be made," Williams says.
The MARSDROP team says using the landers would add only five percent of the total cost of a major mission, making it a cost-effective way to add to the number of probes without making significant additions to the cost.
If successful, PSI also hopes to launch the same technology to explore other celestial bodies with thick atmospheres such as Venus and Saturn's moon Titan.
