NASA's Drone For Other Worlds 30
An anonymous reader writes: A group of engineers is building a new drone. What sets this apart from the hundreds of other drone development projects going on around the world? Well, these engineers are at the Kennedy Space Center, and the drone will be used to gather samples on other worlds. The drone is specifically designed to be able to fly in low- or no-atmosphere situations. Senior technologist Rob Mueller describes it as a "prospecting robot." He says, "The first step in being able to use resources on Mars or an asteroid is to find out where the resources are. They are most likely in hard-to-access areas where there is permanent shadow. Some of the crater walls are angled 30 degrees or more, and that's far too steep for a traditional rover to navigate and climb." They face major challenges with rotor and gas-jet design, they have to figure out navigation without GPS, and the whole system needs to be largely autonomous — you can't really steer a drone yourself with a latency of several minutes (or more).
Re: (Score:2)
Make it look like a big black rectangle! Please!
I'm sorry, I can't do that Dave.
Re: (Score:1)
I can't wait (Score:1)
for the first alien to shoot one down with it's plasma shotgun. Will it be arrested for discharging a firearm inside a populated crater?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
A cubesat launcher modified with manoeuvering thrusters so it could do multiple deployments would work. The question is how small and low-power can you make the atomic clocks?
In practice though, You could get away with some lower orbit probes and synchronize your manouevers to only those times they're overhead providing positioning coverage.
Re: (Score:1)
Re: (Score:1)
These things aren't going to be traveling around the planet. At best they may travel a few miles away from their lander, at that distance some low powered radio beacons, some inertial sensors and a gyro should be enough for positioning. I'd be far more concerned with their propulsion systems. They seem to be on the fence about the propulsion systems they're planning to use, they talk about cold gas jets, then they talk about rotors. I suppose it could be dependent on where the probe is being sent. Roto
Re: (Score:3)
On the Moon or Mars they wouldn't reach very far. But a RTG-powered version on Titan would have unlimited range (although may need to land periodically to recharge its flight batteries). And even a rocket or gas jet version would have quite significant range on an asteroid.
Such a design is obviously going to be very mission sensitive, hence the need for different propulsion systems. Some missions would benefit significantly as well from wings to allow for long distance flight on bodies with atmospheres (Ven
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed, Titan the easiest large world to explore by drone, so long as they tolerate the cryogenic conditions. A highly efficient version could potentially fly continuously just on RTG power (there have been proposals along these lines), although anything adapted to deal with the added weight / inefficiency of hardware to carefully land, collect samples, carry them, etc would probably have to use flight batteries.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
It seems to me that a rudimentary GPS setup around Mars would be of some use. Why not build that first?
GPS is pretty dependent on ground stations which monitor each satellite in the constellation and provides "corrections" to the whole system for it to work. It also requires a minimum of 3 (usually more like 5) satellites to be in view to come up with a location solution. So, you are talking about a bunch of independent satellites with some remote monitoring capability from the surface to fix positions and keep the system accurate enough. That's a LOT of very expensive infrastructure to get to Mars..
Simpl
Re: (Score:2)
And why aren't rovers considered drones? They are semi autonomous vehicles with rudimentary obstacle avoidance and steering.
Manned flight (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
But I suppose they could do both.
If you think that's impressive... (Score:1)
Northrop Grumman's planning an interplanetary drone for Venus. [spacenews.com]
Drones? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Not just any drone! A 3-D printed, Internet of things drone
I built one for the Mars Society (Score:2)
NASA lied about moon missions; what else? (Score:1)
Recent NASA info says we can't get past the Van Allen belts -- the radiation will fry a person.
So, how did the Apollo 11 astronauts get through? Answer: they didn't.
Stanley Kubrick was hired to fake it. Then he was murdered 3 days after revealing this in an interview (just before "Eyes Wide Shut" came out, which he contractually forced it to come out on the 30th anniversary of Apollo 11).
See the hints in the Shining: "A11 work and no play makes Jack a dull boy."
Note carefully that the typewriter did not s
It's called RADAR terrain following.... (Score:3)
You can do this using exactly the same technology that cruse missiles use, terrain following.
All you need is precision terrain/elevation data and you can create a vehicle that can navigate safely from Point A to Point B using a terrain mapping RADAR. You just match the RADAR image to your known terrain map and voilà, instant location, elevation and orientation information that you use to correct your inertial navigation system. Preplan your probes route and activities and say go to that waypoint, land, do science, and return to base when done.
"But we don't HAVE the necessary elevation data yet!" you say? I thought we where in the process of collecting detailed elevation data from Mars. Plus, if you have even a small amount of data which is detailed enough to land the craft with, you can make flights and collect additional terrain data using the very same RADAR you use to navigate with and expand your detailed dataset further and further away from your starting point over time. So you'd fly using the inertial navigation system past areas you knew, collect data and return to the area you already know, send the collected data to earth for post processing and receive an expanded detailed terrain map in return then do your detailed science in this new area. Wash, rinse and repeat as many times as possible.