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

This'll be great...

[The Human Cow]

...until the Martians bring out their peashooters.

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.

Re:New Mars Innovations

[AndroidCat]

We can wait and see how well private-enterprise Moon exploration does in Oct-Nov.

Dependence on atmospheric pressure

[DirtyJ]

I would think that the success of this would depend on our knowledge of the density of the Martian atmosphere. Do we know much about this? Since the pressure will decline with increased altitude, I guess even imperfect knowledge of the absolute pressure could still result in a successful mission, as the balloon would just sink or rise to an altitude of equilibrium. If so, then the balloon could end up with a different field of view than designed. Anyone out there with better knowledge of such atmospheric issues?

Re:Dependence on atmospheric pressure

[alfredw]

We certainly know a bit about the Martian atmosphere... Both the Spirit and Opportunity rovers used it to aerobrake before deploying their parachutes. Certainly not detailed knowledge, but enough to make something like this (which is self-correcting if it gets too high) workable.

Re:Dependence on atmospheric pressure

[Cyclotron_Boy]

Yeah, and this is actually an old idea that was used extensively by the Soviets during their push for planetary exploration. Since the atmosphere of Venus was so hot and dense, they were able to float the balloons with extremely heavy loads. The scheme worked well during the Venusian "night," until the sun came and expanded the volume of gas in the balloon, bursting it. The idea for balloons on Mars has been "floated" before, but it looks like it just might happen this time...

Re:Dependence on atmospheric pressure

[mikerich]

I would think that the success of this would depend on our knowledge of the density of the Martian atmosphere. Do we know much about this?

We know quite a lot.

The Soviet Mars 6 probe recorded atmospheric measurements all the way to the surface, as did the two Viking probes.

And it is routine to use measurements of the strength of signals from orbiters to measure atmospheric density. As the probe slips behind the planet, any atmosphere will interfere with the signal strength. Measure it finely enough and you can plot the varying density with altitude.

This isn't the first proposed balloon on Mars. the Soviet Union and France planned a mission for 1992, which was then slipped to 1994 then to 1996 and finally cancelled. The mission would have comprised of a heavy orbiter which would have acted as a communications relay and survey craft, a number of very small landers and/or penetrators and a pair of balloons.

The balloons would have used a combination of helium and solar heating to gain lift. The helium would provide most of the lift, the warmth of the Sun would give it bouyancy during the day. As it warmed, it would rise and drift along providing an almost constant aerial survey.

In the evening, as it cooled, the balloon would sink back to the surface - the helium would prevent the balloon snagging on the surface and keep the antennae upright. Meanwhile, instruments loaded into a long 'snake' slung below the balloon would be making surface measurements and inspecting the geology.

The balloon was tested on Earth and proved to be highly successful, it's a tragedy that the collapse of the Soviet Union prevented it flying.

Best wishes,
Mike.

YEA- *cough cough choke*

[Berrik]

Roses are red
Violets are blue
On Soviet Mars
Balloons fly you

Re:YEA- *cough cough choke*

[Have Blue]

Why do you think they call it the RED PLANET?

I'll be here all week. Try the veal.

Re:good link i was reading

[Siergen]

Hmm, so the wing has to be lowered to an altitude with different winds (direction and/or speed) in order to allow the balloon to "tack" into the wind like an inverted sail boat. That's a neat idea! I can easily understand how that would work here on Earth.

However, I was under the impression that the less dense Martian atmosphere changed little with altitude. Is there enough variation in Martian winds with altitude for this system to work there?

We can't land a big air bag on Mars

[ObviousGuy]

But we will be able to set up a giant balloon with a big-ass wing suspended by miles of cable flying over the Martian surface.

Color me skeptical.

Re:We can't land a big air bag on Mars

[dekashizl]

Err... Not only can we land an airbag on Mars, but we just did it successfully. Twice.

If the machinery fails...

[romit_icarus]

...hire Richard Branson to operate the balloon!

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.

Attempted before

[chamilto0516]

Nah, this is nothing new. My three year old has tried to send every ballon he has got is hands on straight to Mars. We have started tying little loops in the string for his wrists to stop this.

If they can get a ballon that high, I say go for it.

red ballons

[QEDog]

Great way to start a war with the Marsians!

99 red ballons floating in the summer sky
Panic bells, it's red alert
There's something here from somewhere else
They war machine springs of life
Opens up one eager eye
Focusing it on the sky
As 99 red ballons go by.

Oh well, no more 80's music...

Use as a Wi-Fi / Broadcasting Point

[Gurezaemon]

Am I the only one that thinks this could be a useful way to keep stable a base from which to broadcast all sorts of stuff?

Tethered balloons have long annoying (and heavy?) tethers for planes to run into, but this seems to stay above that height.

Covering the gas bag with solar cells or the like could mean the thing could stay up there for ages.

But will there be pink robots...

[Hobbex]

... approaching Pavonis Mons by balloon.

Pie in the sky

[StickMang]

This is funny because I work for NASA's Balloon Program Office, and I think this was an idea that we rejected. From what I remember, the relationship between Global Aerospace and the BPO went sour, so I assume that after we rejected their proposal on this, they went around trying to sell it to different parts of NASA.

We're developing our own balloon trajectory control system that hasn't been publicised yet, and it will be what flies on mars and earth, not this pile of garbage from GAC. I beleive the model they showed us was flawed in many ways, so we decided we could design it better in-house. Not really sure why there's an article on this, but you might as well not worry about any advancements on this particular project, as it will never materialize.

Re:Pie in the sky

[davejenkins]

We're developing our own balloon trajectory control system that hasn't been publicised yet, and it will be what flies on mars and earth, not this pile of garbage from GAC. I beleive the model they showed us was flawed in many ways, so we decided we could design it better in-house. Not really sure why there's an article on this, but you might as well not worry about any advancements on this particular project, as it will never materialize

Hrmmmm... I am not sure which is worse:

1. the inferred arrogance of this post (and assumingly in that office and NASA in general)
2. the theiving of intellectual property (you will most likely use some of their ideas somewhere)
3. the declatory statements that your office has a monopoly on things.

Aren`t any ofthe rants getting through to you guys at NASA? When will you simply focus on supporting destinations and building simple platforms, through which the rest of us can then launch/explore/build what we want? (yes, we will pay you the fees...)

headline news

[Joe the Lesser]

An object crashed into the dunes here on Mars from the sky, which among increasing reports of so-called 'alien' activity, has escalated the public's fear of an invasion.

The Martian government continues to deny any knowledge of beings from the Blue planet, and claims the object was just a weather balloon, and nothing to worry about.

What about the pending helium shortage?

[slashname3]

Now we are going to ship helium to Mars? What happened to the helium shortage that was mentioned a couple of years ago?
I seem to remember reading that the worlds reserves (which I believe are mostly if not all in the U.S.) are getting down to almost critical levels with no new reserves being found.

Re:What about the pending helium shortage?

[tho 1234]

YOu might want to work out the math behind your idea first. As you may know, the electric force decreases with the SQUARE of the distance, so any the electric force you can produce in a balloon of macroscopic proportions is going to be negligible. Certainly not enough to counteract the 15 pounds of force acting on every square inch of the balloon.

And you can't increase the voltage past a few thousand volts, that would simply ionize the air and cause arcing.

Even if you could supply enough voltage, the control system would be impossible to achieve, as any turbulance in the air will change the shape in certain areas of the balloon, requiring massive real-time corrections to the voltage for it to maintain its shape. This is would require solving in real time millions of simultaneous non-linear equations, something we're not about to achieve.

Re:What about the pending helium shortage?

[Pherry]

A quick check in the Wikipedia, under the ocurrance section for Helium reassures me a little "Helium is the second most abundant element in the universe"

It's just a matter of patience ;o)

Old bands predict the future

[Roosey]

I guess The 5th Dimension was onto something here. Remember how their song went?

Would you like to ride in my beautiful balloon
We could float among the stars together, you and I

All they need to do is paint it red and they've got all of the best balloon songs covered.

Funny sounding martians?

[slashname3]

So does this explain Marvin Martians voice? He's been sucking on a ballon?

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.

On Mars' Atmosphere, Scientific Data

[dekashizl]

Source: Calvin J. Hamilton, http://www.solarviews.com/eng/mars.htm:

Atmosphere

The atmosphere of Mars is quite different from that of Earth. It is composed primarily of carbon dioxide with small amounts of other gases. The six most common components of the atmosphere are:

• Carbon Dioxide (CO2): 95.32%
• Nitrogen (N2): 2.7%
• Argon (Ar): 1.6%
• Oxygen (O2): 0.13%
• Water (H2O): 0.03%
• Neon (Ne): 0.00025 %

Martian air contains only about 1/1,000 as much water as our air, but even this small amount can condense out, forming clouds that ride high in the atmosphere or swirl around the slopes of towering volcanoes. Local patches of early morning fog can form in valleys. At the Viking Lander 2 site, a thin layer of water frost covered the ground each winter.

There is evidence that in the past a denser martian atmosphere may have allowed water to flow on the planet. Physical features closely resembling shorelines, gorges, riverbeds and islands suggest that great rivers once marked the planet.

Temperature and Pressure

The average recorded temperature on Mars is -63 C (-81 F) with a maximum temperature of 20 C (68 F) and a minimum of -140 C (-220 F).

Barometric pressure varies at each landing site on a semiannual basis. Carbon dioxide, the major constituent of the atmosphere, freezes out to form an immense polar cap, alternately at each pole. The carbon dioxide forms a great cover of snow and then evaporates again with the coming of spring in each hemisphere. When the southern cap was largest, the mean daily pressure observed by Viking Lander 1 was as low as 6.8 millibars; at other times of the year it was as high as 9.0 millibars. The pressures at the Viking Lander 2 site were 7.3 and 10.8 millibars. In comparison, the average pressure of the Earth is 1000 millibars.

--
For news, status, updates, scientific info, images, video, and more, check out:
(AXCH) 2004 Mars Exploration Rovers - News, Status, Technical Info, History.

Good and bad

[Gorimek]

Good: This avoids the by far most dangerous part of current Mars missions: The landing. Since the balloon doesn't have to hit the ground, it won't break when it hits the ground.

Bad: Mars' atmosphere is about 0.5% of our. In other words, it's 99.5% vacuum. How ginormogantuan must a balloon be to carry any serious weight there?? Gravity is just 1/3, but that hardly begins to compensate.

Re:Good and bad

[Capt'n Hector]

As long as the pressure from the inside is the same as the pressure on the outside, we're good to go. Assuming an ideal gas, this means the number of particles on the inside of the baloon is equal to the number of particles on the outside of the baloon. What we are really concernd about is the composition of the atmosphere, not the density. The baloon's size therefore is not related to the atmospheric pressure but rather the molar mass of the atmosphere. And as you said, gravity is weaker, so if anything I bet the baloon would be smaller than it has to be on earth.

Atmoshperic Density

[Rank_Tyro]

It's my understanding that the Martian atmoshpere is a lot thinner than ours. How much helium would be needed to support several hundred pounds of equipment? Wouldn't hydrogen be a better gas?

Re:Atmoshperic Density

[CComMack]

For hydrogen to explode, it needs to be in the presence of oxygen.

This is much less a concern in the Martian atmosphere, which is 95% corbon dioxide, as opposed to Earth's 80%-20% nitrogen-oxygen mix.

As for storage and transport, hydrogen can either be well contained (rocket fuel rarely explodes prematurely these days), or generated by a chemical reaction upon arrival (anyone remember what you get from adding a metal to acid from middle school chemistry? Though I'd imagine the medium of choice would likely be something like hydrogen peroxide. IANA Chemical Engineer.)

Adverts...

[Jonathan Platt]

Advertiser's finally start slowing down on the internet, and now they move on to another planet.

I can just see the good old Whitmans and Goodyear blimps floating over the red planet.

They'd have to be bigger of course, so observers could see the blue object floating around Mars from a telescope on Earth.

Global Aerospace Corporation?

[BitwizeGHC]

Am I the only one who is reminded of United Aerospace Corporation (UAC)? You know, from Doom?

I'm afraid those balloons will end up taking pictures of cacodemons or something...

A new conspiracy

[skinfitz]

We humans think we are so clever don't we? We've had (allegedly) men on the moon, and now we are remotely exploring Mars, but really there is something more sinister going on right under our noses.

You see, in the future, the question may be asked "what race of beings first made it to Mars?" and the answer? Machines.

You know the way dolphins triain people to feed them fish so they don't have to bother with all that pesky hunting? Well it looks to me suspiciously like the machines may be planning to colonize Mars first by tricking us into financing their operations. They already have made it there in the past, and in fact right now they have two mobile individuals on the surface that are imagining god knows what fate for human kind. On earth, they have managed to get a model T800 Terminator into a strong political position, which could end up making President.

Ultimately, ironically, the epitaph of the human race may be "Hasta la vista, baby."

So basically...

[Channard]

.. the Martian Govt can explain away the crash of an alien craft on their planet as a wrecked balloon and actually be right.

Fly over now

[IPFreely]

You can take virtual flyovers of Mars now. A neat website hosts virtual, controlable Mars flyovers of famous sites, including the lander sites. MarsQuestOnline has several Mars virtual flyovers, and lots of other good Mars stuff. check it out.

99.5% nothing?

[Eevee]

Just look at SCO's lawsuits.

prior art

[savuporo]

A mention of prior art in balooning the other planets would be in order. Many people arent aware of the fact that Russian Venera program, what later become Vega, successfully flew two balloons in Venusian atmosphere in 1984.
Geoffrey Landis has a couple very thought-provoking papers on his website, regarding possible further developments of atmospheric flight on both mars and venus, and possibilities for human living in upper atmosphere ....

This is a big deal?

[Mr_Blank]

Majority Of Americans Thought We Already Had A Moon Base
WASHINGTON, DC--A NASA poll conducted to gauge support for President Bush's space-exploration initiative revealed that a depressing 57 percent of Americans believe that the U.S. already has a research base on the moon. "We put that international space-station thing up there in the '60s," phone-poll respondent Randy Snow said. "It might be on Mars, but I think it's the moon--wherever they have the golf course that President Kennedy played on. Remember, the Cubans tried to take it over?" NASA officials said they hope someday to make Americans' perception a reality.

Thanks The Onion

Site Design Lifted from Grocklaw

[Java Ape]

Did anybody else notice that the site design was eerily similar to that of Grocklaw? I wonder whose design they stole for the balloon? I wonder if they know about . . . (clutches tinfoil hat more tightly).