In March, Discovery News had a look at a Mars rover concept that could revolutionize how we carry out planetary exploration.
This rover has no wheels, it's inspired by a bizarre desert plant and its only means of propulsion is the Martian wind. And now, North Carolina State University (NCSU) scientists have designed a computer program to test different designs of the rover before it is even built.
Enter the Mars Tumbleweed Rover, destined to roll where no robot has rolled before.
WIDE ANGLE: Mars is a planet ripe for exploration by mankind. Or is it?
An Exploration Game Changer?
The Mars landscape has so far been dominated by landers and wheeled rovers, and that probably won't change for some time to come. Sure, NASA's current Mars Exploration Rovers are (or "was" in the case of the hibernating Spirit) showing us amazing longevity, but is there another way to traverse Mars?
Some regions of the Red Planet are impassable for wheeled rovers and landers are stuck on the spot. This leaves a huge variety of boulder-strewn plains, complex mountain regions and steep valley sides that are off-limits to traditional rovers and landers. These regions can only be studied from orbit.
So, over a decade ago, scientists started working on a paradigm shift in thinking: why not build a lightweight spherical rover that uses the Mars wind to roll, able to roll over obstacles that would normally be a problem for small wheels?
"A fleet of Tumbleweeds could cover a much greater area using the wind for propulsion," Kim Kuhlman, Senior Research Scientist of the Planetary Science Institute, told Discovery News. "Some of them may get stuck and become stationary platforms similar to Spirit's current situation, but the majority would perform a 'random-walk' survey of an area orders of magnitude greater than that of a rover."
Testing Designs
Although the tumbleweed design is only just seeing the light of day after many years maturing, it was the Earth and Space 2010 conference in Hawaii on March 16, 2010, that pushed the concept back into the limelight.
Currently, there are several tumbleweed designs under consideration, but which will perform best on an alien world? Following in the footsteps of the development of most space vehicles, the tumbleweed will need to undergo exhaustive computer simulations before the concept solidifies into NASA's next new means to explore Mars.
And now the NCSU researchers have taken up the task to test the various tumbleweed configurations, including the "box kite" and inflatable concepts. (Watch the Discovery News video: James Williams describes how these designs could work.)
"You can't just build hundreds of different rover designs to see what works – it's too expensive," said Alexandre Hartl, a Ph.D. student who took part in the research, told Gizmag. "This model allows us to determine which designs may be most viable. Then we can move forward to build and test the most promising candidates."
Sounds sensible to me.
Taking Tumbleweeds Seriously
The NCSU research has been published in the Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets and it is intended to study the environmental impacts on the lightweight frame of the tumbleweed concept.
Sending a tumbleweed rover to Mars isn't without its challenges. For a start, when I spoke to Kuhlman in March, she was very keen to point out that the tumbleweed technology is far from the stage at which a mission will happen in the very near future. Instrument and battery miniaturization will be a key factor in this endeavor.
"This technology is not very mature because funding has not been available," she said.
Also, the attitude to this new kind of rover hasn't always been positive toward the NASA and Planetary Science Institute scientists involved in the project. "I've actually had a very influential scientist in astrobiology call the idea 'loopy' to my face," Kuhlman added.
Some may call it "loopy," but I call it "lateral thinking" and it looks as if the NCSU researchers are thinking the same.
"The model that we've developed is important, because it will help NASA make informed decisions about the final design characteristics of any tumbleweed rovers it ultimately sends to Mars," said Andre Mazzoleni, co-author of the NCSU paper.
Image credits: NASA LaRC/Case Western University/NASA Planetary Data System
Tags: Mars, NASA, Planets, Robotics, Space Technology
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