NASA Develops Prototype For Mars Drone

The race for Mars is well and truly on with space agencies of multiple countries working towards this goal, you’ve even got private companies like SpaceX in the United States that have this aim of reaching the Red Planet. NASA is in the game as well and it has shown off a new prototype of the Prandtl-m or the Preliminary Research Aerodynamic Design to Land on Mars, which as the name suggests is a drone that’s destined for Mars.

NASA aims to launch this drone from a descending rover into Martian skies so that it’s able to survey potential landing sites for a possible manned mission to the planet in the future.

The space agency estimates that Prandtl-m will be able to travel up to 20 miles after it starts some 2,000 feet above the surface, it will weight about 2.6 pounds on Earth but will be reduced to about 1 pounds due to Mars’ gravity.

NASA won’t immediately be able to send this drone up to Mars because the rover which is going to take the drone there is not going to be launched until 2022 or 2014.

So till then NASA will conduct various tests with the drone such as strapping it to a balloon to study high-altitude radiation and a flight next year which will see the drone glide for up to five hours before reaching the Earth.

Adnan Farooqui
Categories: General
Tags: Drones, mars, NASA