NASA is incredibly ambitious as it plans to launch foldable glider drones in a space exploration mission on Mars in 2020. Since manned missions to space are too expensive and potentially risky, the space agency opted to use an inexpensive and expendable drone, which could be the first man-made object to take flight on Mars, for future aerial survey expeditions in space.
A prototype of an aircraft known as the Prandtl-m (Preliminary Research Aerodynamic Design to Land on Mars) is currently under construction at NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California. According to Techno Buffalo, the foldable glider drone prototype, which looks like a sophisticated boomerang, measures 24 inches across its wingspan and weighs about 2.6 pounds on Earth. While on Mars, it will just weigh a single pound because of Red Planet's lower gravity.
"The aircraft would be part of the ballast that would be ejected from the aeroshell that takes the Mars rover to the planet," NASA Armstrong chief scientist Al Bowers said. "It would be able to deploy and fly in the Martian atmosphere and glide down and land.
Made of either fiber glass or carbon fiber to best recover from Mars' unusual conditions, Prandtl-m could give an effective range of almost 20 miles, if deployed 2,000 feet above the surface of the planet. The glider drone is also capable of self-correcting its altitude during descent and could unfold itself from a 3U or three-unit CubeSat and glide toward the surface, taking aerial snaps of key sites. As per India Today, a CubeSat is a box measuring about four inches to a side and a 3U CubeSat is three such units stacked together.
For future space exploration missions, Bowers added the Prandtl-m could survey some of the proposed landing sites and send very detailed high resolution photographic map images back to Earth that could help scientists learn the suitability of those landing sites.
Meanwhile, the first test of the glider drone will come later this year when Prandtl-m will be released from a high altitude balloon at 100,000 feet, a height that is similar to Martian atmospheric conditions, NBC News reported. For the near future, at least one and possibly two additional test flights are planned.
In 2016, a second flight will take place, which will see Prandtl-m fly for as long as five hours until it lands on Earth. A probable third flight will be launched to simulate the final plan of its takeoff from a CubeSat.
To further boost the ability of several space agencies in broadening their exploration of the solar system, NASA will test a robotic submarine to explore Saturn's Moon Titan, a solar powered plane to explore Venus while a robotic squid and a helicopter airplane hybrid are also in the works.
As NASA plans to launch small helicopter drones to accompany the Mars 2020 rover, the Prandtl-m glider drone could conduct aerial surveillance on landing sites for the eventual manned mission on Mars, if trials are successful.
