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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."
I quickly read over the article, and I failed to see any reference to direction of this thing. Now, it would seem to me that it could get blown into a place that it could not get out of. Without some sort of steering mechanism how do they ever plan to work this thing? And of course, since there are no GPS satellites around Mars they couldn't even determine the location, especially if it was picked up by the wind or something. It sounds like a good idea in theory, but it seems to me that the data would be nearly irellivent without positional data to accompany it.
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Mars doesn't have much of an atmosphere. It's very thin and in places, it's too cold and what would be an atmosphere is, instead, frozen. Such a thing would have to be very light and might not even work anyways. I understand the problems with a traditional four-wheeled exploration vehicle, but this does little to solve the problems. Also, it only allows for exploration where the wind takes it, not where scientists want it to go. Again, it's a nice idea, but it has a few problems that make it a bad idea.
This is an interesting idea.... but its entire basis for movement -- the wind on Mars -- seems to limit its usefulness to gathering data only on the areas of Mars where winds blow the strongest. Not that there isn't valuable information to be gathered there, but aren't windy areas somewhat of a scientific dead-end? I mean, if this thing ends up following the prevalent wind currents, wouldn't it just sort of follow a relatively smooth path worn away by centuries of wind erosion? The "juicy bits" of Mars are those that have been left more or less untouched for millenia -- those are the areas that give us the greatest insight into the history of the planet... which are precisely the areas that this thing won't be blown to -- and I suspect, where one would find just the sort of rough terrain this probe is built for. Wind has a bad habit of mixing things up -- ie. are these mineral samples native to the area, or have they been carried from the other side of the planet by this wind system?
Optical mouse technology might be the key in atleast determining speed. Assuming there is enough in the way of magnetics on mars, atleast some means of determining direction, in conjuction with an altermeter to determine it's relative height based on known factors. And provided you did some form of arial recon to verify it's position in reality at any given time, the location of such a device can be determined on a planet and (just about) any given time, assuming you have adquate maps to begin with.
Steering, or some form of manual control to actually get this device into or out of a specific location seems somewhat vague to me... but one *could* do it with gyros.
Seems like a great means of getting a land scanner about, provided you happy with where the wind takes you.
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This thing can move around easily and efficiently - fine. But how are we supposed to make it go where we want to go? On Mars, with its sandstorms, etc, control would probably be vital. OTOH, these could be deployed en masse and just keep beaming data back - durable, mobile, sensors.
If you could put 50 of these things down at once, scatter them around.... (They are terribly light-weight, right? Supposed to be blown around by the thin martian wind?) You sprinkle them on mars from orbit, and they expand to catch the wind for re-entry. They bounce a few times, then start tumbling along.
So what if a few get stuck in a crevasse here and there? As far as location tracking, I'd assume they would each have their own radio frequency, and the orbiter would only be able to pick them up when it was over the horizon. Shouldn't be too terribly hard to get a rouch idea where the thing is. (Data sent back from the probe, compared against current mapping images ought to tell the rest of the story)
I like this idea better than building one (or two) big clunky rovers that have a 50/50 chance of surviving Nasa's re-entry math.
That kind of makes me nervous. I don't really like the idea of any sort of "seed" probing like that. For one, it seems like an invasion of sorts. Two, its a recipe for spreading bacteria all over the planet -- despite NASA's stringent cleanliness, the fact of the matter is that some bacteria CAN survive space flight and reentry -- if that happens, and 20 years after we send these things to fly willy-nilly around Mars, how can we tell if these bacteria or whatever are originally from Mars or from Earth? It just seems a wee bit risky to me. *shrug*
Design the tumbleweed sphere with a helium bottle inside. Add a valve to vent the helium to the outside. If there has been no detected movement of the sphere for a day or two, inflate with helium until it attains slightly positive bouyancy. Drift off for a few hours and then open the vent, settling back to the ground. Let the wind blow it around in tumbleweed mode until it stops.
Rinse.Repeat.
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Question: how difficult is it to put satellites into geosynchronous (or Areosynchronous
and 2), I'm a bit ignorant of the calibration methods for GPS. Just how would the three Martian satellites get their position calibrated? Drop a retro on the planet's surface or something?
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