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ESA Shows Off Quadcopter Landing Concept For Mars Rovers

Posted by samzenpus on from the drop-that-anywhere dept.

coondoggie writes Taking a page from NASA's rocket powered landing craft from its most recent Mars landing mission, the European Space Agency is showing off a quadcopter that the organization says can steer itself to smoothly lower a rover onto a safe patch of the rocky Martian surface. The ESA said its dropship, known as the StarTiger's Dropter is indeed a customized quadcopter drone that uses a GPS, camera and inertial systems to fly into position, where it then switches to vision-based navigation supplemented by a laser range-finder and barometer to lower and land a rover autonomously.

4 of 104 comments (clear)

  1. This is not going to work. by SuricouRaven · · Score: 5, Interesting

    Mars has an atmosphere. Barely - atmospheric pressure is 0.006 earth-atmospheres. Maybe 0.01 if the weather is right and at a low enough point. You'd get bugger-all lift from a 'copter, quad or otherwise. Even in the nice one-third G, that thing isn't flying. It's hard enough getting something down by parachute - those rovers have to be built to take a nasty impact, because even with a huge parachute and low gravity they still hit the ground hard.

    1. Re: This is not going to work. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Nor will GPS help much on Mars. It's like this is a thinly veined cover for developing a military drone for dropping materiel into a battle zone. Everything about it seems geared towards terrestrial use.

  2. Seven Minutes of Terror by GPS+Pilot · · Score: 3, Interesting

    If you've never watched "Seven Minutes of Terror," which explains the crazy but successful scheme to lower the Curiousity rover onto Mars, do yourself a favor and go here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...

    It's the best video the U.S. Government has ever produced.

    --
    That that is is that that that that is not is not.
  3. Re:GPS on Mars by Charliemopps · · Score: 4, Interesting

    a customized quadcopter drone that uses a GPS, camera and inertial systems to fly into position .....

    Yup, hate to break it to you rocket scientists at NASA, but there is a slight flaw in this design for use on Mars.

    I'd suspect those rocket scientists planned to, oh, I dunno, put GPS satellites into orbit around mars prior to landing the rover?