Mars Rover: Tumbleweed Models

An anonymous reader writes "A North Carolina State project has prototyped a wind-blown Mars exploration rover. It draws its inspiration from the lowly tumbleweed, to cover large distances with low-power requirements. For collecting atmospheric, thermal or geological samples across great distances, the 'single-wheel' tumbleweed has some advantages over the usual four-wheeling approach to tough terrain."

Comments

Location: Known landing refernce point

[westyvw]

By knowing the landing location, you can extrapolate where you have gone if you have am original bearing and known travel direction.

A link about things like this:

http://www.nasatech.com/Briefs/Nov01/NPO21235.ht ml

Also you could remote view it if a non landing craft kept track of it

On the other note, the winds are lacking on mars:
Perhaps a solar wind collector?

http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2001/ast31jan _1 .htm

Been done since the 1960s at JPL

[SegFault]

This kind of thing has been done since the 1960s at NASA's JPL. See http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/adv_tech/rovers/tmblweed.h tm

SegFault

Old Idea

[Josuah]

Kinda weird, but the article claims that "While working as a 2002 summer intern at NASA Langley, team leader David Minton initiated the idea to study a "Mars Tumbleweed" for the class project." Well, that'd be all great and everything if JPL hadn't already come up with the idea: Exploring Mars: Blowing in the Wind?. The JPL article is dated August 10, 2001.

Someone probably should have told David Minton about Jack A. Jones' research at JPL. "Jack A. Jones...is leading JPL's research into various inflatable machines for exploring space. JPL's Inflatable Technology for Robotics Program aims to create rugged, all-terrain vehicles and other devices with low mass and low-packing volume."

It Came From Earth ...

[jc42]

I don't really like the idea of any sort of "seed" probing like that

Too late; it's been going on for a couple of billion years already.

In the 1960's (and probably earlier) a number of astronomers did detailed studies of the Earth's dust tail, which is formed by the solar wind blowing off the outermost atmosphere. It's pretty thin, but it's thick enough that it interferes with some sorts of astronomy.

They basically reported that the Earth's tail does contain particles of dust up to the size of bacterial spores. Tests had already shown that many bacterial spores can survive for long periods in space, the conclusion was obvious: The Earth has been spraying the outer solar system with bacterial spores for as long as bacteria have been making airborn spores, probably several billion years.

So there is life on all the outer planets in the solar system, and it came from Earth. Whether any of those spores can survive elsewhere isn't known. But conditions on Mars are not all that dissimilar to conditions in the dry valleys in Antarctica, and some bacteria do survive and grow there. So it's possible that some of the bacteria from Earth are surviving and growing there, though probably not very well. OTOH, some have been there for a couple billion years, so there has been time for natural selection to do its thing.

Some of the astronomers also pointed out back then that the Earth's dust tail doesn't stay within the solar system. It eventually reaches interstellar space. Considering that the Earth orbits the galaxy about 4 times per billion years, and bacteria have been here for around 4 billion years, the dust tail of Earth has pretty much permeated the galaxy with spores. Similar calculations would apply to any other Earth-like planet in the galaxy.

This sort of calculation is part of the basic of the "panspermia" hypothesis that has gotten a bit of discussion in some circles. Of course, it's a bit difficult to collect real evidence on such a topic.
But if we do find living bacteria on Mars or Titan that have chemistry similar to bacteria on Earth, it will be weak supportive evidence.

This isn't the first time this topic has come up on /.