With the demise of the Phoenix Lander at the end of last year, and with the Spirit and Opportunity rovers reaching their old age (see an image gallery), a robotic aircraft could be the best bet to uncover the origin of the plumes of methane on the red planet.
So says , principal investigator of a NASA project to test the feasibility of flying in the Red Planet鈥檚 atmosphere.
The ARES project (Aerial Regional-scale Environmental Survey) being developed at in Hampton, Virginia, is currently testing full- and half-scale models to test which designs would fly best in the Martian atmosphere.
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Lighter loads
At 1 to 2 kilometres above Mars, temperatures and pressures are equivalent to those at 30 kilometres above Earth鈥檚 surface, meaning that planes have to fly faster to generate sufficient lift. However, the one thing going in the engineer鈥檚 favour is the fact that gravity is three times weaker than on Earth, so any payload will be only one-third as heavy.
鈥淭he evolution of this [ARES] technology will be to have planes which can land and take off, and may be solar powered or capable of generating fuel from the Martian atmosphere,鈥� Levine told 快猫短视频.
So far Mars exploration has been either from the heights of orbit, or by rovers on the ground. An aircraft a few kilometres above the planet鈥檚 surface could provide the best of both worlds, says Levine, taking high quality aerial images, while also acting as a scout for a rover.
One of the main goals of the ARES project 鈥� not yet green-lighted by NASA 鈥� is to map the distribution of gases emitted from the planet鈥檚 surface with an onboard mass spectrometer. The recent discovery of methane plumes potentially produced by organisms makes the prospect of an aeroplane 鈥渕ore exciting and more relevant鈥� than ever, Levine says.
