NASA is preparing to test a foldable glider drone which could be deployed on Mars in the 2020s. The small, lightweight craft could conduct an aerial survey of possible landing locations for future crewed missions to the Red Planet.
Sending people to space is costly and potentially dangerous, it is also more difficult to get funding from for. Drones on the other hand are relatively inexpensive to build, launch and are expendable. It is not surprising that drones have recently caught the attention of the brass at NASA.
In addition to the rovers, a robotic submarine to explore Saturn’s Moon Titan, a solar powered plane to explore Venus, a robotic squid and a helicopter airplane hybrid are all on the drawing board. The agency is also contemplating small helicopter drones to accompany the Mars 2020 rover and conduct aerial surveillance for it.
The latest prototype to get the go ahead from NASA is the Preliminary Research Aerodynamic Design to Land on Mars, or Prandtl-m. If the testing is successful, the craft could accompany a Mars mission in the 2020 carried as ballast with another lander.
The glider would unfold itself from a 3U or three unit CubeSat and glide toward the surface, taking aerial photographs of key sites. A CubeSat is a box measuring about four inches to a side, a 3U CubeSat is three such units stacked together.
“The aircraft would be part of the ballast that would be ejected from the aeroshell that takes the Mars rover to the planet. It would be able to deploy and fly in the Martian atmosphere and glide down and land. The Prandtl-m could overfly some of the proposed landing sites for a future astronaut mission and send back to Earth very detailed high resolution photographic map images that could tell scientists about the suitability of those landing sites,” said Al Bowers, NASA Armstrong chief scientist and Prandtl-m program manager in a statement.
The first test of the craft will come later this year when a prototype will be released from a high altitude balloon at 100,000 feet, a hight which will replicate Martian atmospheric conditions.
At least one and possibly two additional test flights are planned for the near future. At least one of those flights could include the testing of some scientific instruments on the Prandtl-m.
“We have a number of summer community college students coming that are going to help us design and build the aircraft that will complete the first phase of the mission. We’re going to build some vehicles and we are going to put them in very unusual attitudes and see if they will recover where other aircraft would not. Our expectation is that they will recover. As soon as we get that information, we will feel much better flying it from a high-altitude balloon,” said Bowers.
If the tests are successful and the drone get the green light from NASA it would add nothing to the cost of the mission. It’s small size and light weight wouldn’t be sufficient to add anything to the cost of the launch.
“The actual aircraft’s wingspan when it is deployed would measure 24 inches and weigh less than a pound. With Mars gravity 38 percent of what it is on Earth, that actually allows us up to 2.6 pounds and the vehicle will still weigh only 1 pound on Mars. It will be made of composite material, either fiberglass or carbon fiber. We believe this particular design could best recover from the unusual conditions of an ejection,” said Bowers.
Whether or not the Prandtl-m ends up on a Mars mission, it’s becoming clear that lightweight, inexpensive drones are set to accelerate the ability of the world’s space agencies to explore the solar system.
