Fly Over Mars... in a Robotic Balloon

Roland Piquepaille writes "A Californian company, Global Aerospace Corporation (GAR), is developing remote-controlled balloons for the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC). BBC News Online reports that their goal is to send these balloons carrying robots and cameras to explore Mars skies. But it's not for a near term future. The robotic StratoSail will have a stabilizing wing suspended several miles below it. It will be able to stay above Mars for months. It will send robotic probes to monitor the surface and minilabs to carry out experiments. This overview contains more details, references and images about the StratoSail."

Comments

New Mars Innovations

[W32.Klez.A]

The interesting thing about all these new Mars races is that instead of just the US and Russia going at it, we have all manner of companies and countries going for it. A lot of this stuff seems far-fetched, mind-you, but I think that just means there's more chance for some company or country that we're not expecting to make more of a difference than we can imagine. This seemed a little odd to me, but then I realized I wasn't thinking outside the box, and decided to consider its plausibility.

interesting...

[highwaytohell]

This looks like a real possibility, and with more Mars rovers being sent over and us gaining further knowledge of the planet then this looks like a very real possibility. They would just have to factor in the nature of the wind direction, velocity, currents etc. But this sort of project, i'd assume, would go a lot further and be able to map more of Mars' terrain than a rover and give us a better view of the geological structure of Mars.

Re:Excellent idea, but extend it.

[complete loony]

You can't use a balloon to float over the moon, it has no atmosphere.
But you can just stay in orbit. How close to the ground could a satelite orbit the moon? Besides how much is more science on the moon worth? not much in my estimation.