"Smart Dust" to Explore Planets 85
Ollabelle writes "The BBC is reporting how tiny chips with flexible skins could be used to glide through a planet's atmosphere in swarms to gather data and report back. 'The idea of using millimetre-sized devices to explore far-flung locations is nothing new, but Dr Barker and his colleagues are starting to look in detail at how it might be achieved. The professor at Glasgow's Nanoelectronics Research Centre told delegates at the Royal Astronomical Society gathering that computer chips of the size and sophistication required to meet the challenge already existed.'"
We can't be content just polluting our own planet? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Micro-rovers (Score:2, Interesting)
Why would 12 microrovers cost more than one big rover? (The next one under preparation is much bigger than even Spirit.)
I meant Sojourner-sized, not Sojourner technology. Sojourner relied on a separate lander to send messages back, and thus couldn't wonder far. We don't need that. I am thinking that microprobes could do without a contact spectrometer. Use only remote-sensing spectrometers. That way more weight can be devoted to orbiter communications.
Only if you want to go relatively fast and fear fatal mistakes. If a microrover gets stuck or scratched, it gets stuck or scratched. The slowness of Spirit and Oppy is largey due to risk aversion.
I am not against larger rovers, only saying we need both types. One large rover and a batch of 12 micro-rovers would probably be more scientifically useful than 2 big rovers because a bunch can survey more diverse areas of Mars.
battery (Score:2, Interesting)
batteries. Battery lifetime is a challenge itself for smart dust, what happens when the application requires
data to be transmitted all the time in order to monitor changes constatly, how long would the nodes last? In
battlefields there's no need to transmit data unless something happens, like an explosion will trigger an event.
Anyhow, this is a great idea and makes a very good project!
Attribution?! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:Attribution?! (Score:1, Interesting)