Mars will be conquered by leaf drones weighing a fly

Mars will be conquered by leaf drones weighing a fly
Mars will be conquered by leaf drones weighing a fly
Anonim

Engineers have developed extremely simple and cheap devices, each of which weighs a billion times less than any rover. More like sheets of paper, these probes are designed to travel through the atmosphere of the Red Planet and other celestial bodies.

The development is described in a scientific article published in the journal Advanced Materials.

Recall that this summer the Mars 2020 mission should go to the Red Planet. Within its framework, the first in history Martian helicopter will go to conquer the extraterrestrial sky, about which Vesti. Nauka (nauka.vesti.ru) spoke in detail.

There are no scientific instruments on board this spacecraft. Its task, it would seem, is extremely simple: to make the first flight in the atmosphere of Mars. Such caution of space engineers has a completely logical explanation: the "extremely simple" task in fact can turn out to be incredibly difficult and risky. And professionals want to reduce the number of expensive systems they risk.

The authors of the new concept offer a different solution. What if you unleash a fleet of incredibly simple and cheap devices into the skies of the Red Planet? Even if almost all of them fail, there will be at least some number of probes that have completed the mission.

"The Martian helicopter is very interesting, but still it's just one machine, and a complex one," explains the head of the research team Igor Bargatin from the University of Pennsylvania. since it will be impossible to fix anything. We propose a fundamentally different approach: do not put all your eggs in one basket."

The devices created by the researchers do not have moving parts (namely, they are the most vulnerable point of any technology). The design is a plate literally assembled from hollow tubes. They are made of aluminum oxide, and their walls are only 50 nanometers thick.

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The size of the device can range from a few millimeters to several centimeters. In the first case, the mass of the structure will be only 0.3 milligrams (approximately the same as that of a fruit fly). That is, it is millions of times lighter than a Martian helicopter (1.8 kilograms) and billions of times lighter than the Perseverance rover, which will carry it (1025 kilograms).

The "tubular" structure serves two purposes. First, it makes the device much more durable than a solid sheet of the same weight and dimensions (which is well known to corrugated board manufacturers). And secondly, it serves as the engine for this "flying carpet".

When one side of the structure is heated by the sun's rays or another heat source, atmospheric gas that fills the channels is set in motion. Numb on one side, it escapes from the other, acting like a jet stream. The thing is that the temperature of the channel wall changes throughout its entire length. This effect has long been known to physicists, but it has not yet been used to create any kind of flying vehicles.

The fact is that with the usual force of gravity and air density, prototypes of such devices proudly soar at a height of … half a millimeter. It's no surprise that aircraft designers ignore this approach to conquering the skies.

However, the atmospheric pressure on Mars is 170 times lower than on Earth. In such an environment, "Mars aircraft" can not only rise to a decent height, but also carry a load that exceeds their own weight several times.

This has already been shown in experiments. True, the pressure in the test chambers was even lower than on the Martian surface (10-200 pascals against 600 pascals). But it should be taken into account that on the Red Planet the force of gravity is 2, 6 times less than on the green one.

But what useful things can such tiny probes do? Considering the continuing advances in miniaturization of electronics, it is not too small. The developers hope that the drones will carry sensors that determine the composition of the atmosphere. In addition, they could have a sticky surface and collect soil particles on it (when planting or directly from the air). These samples could then be delivered to the rover for analysis.

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In experiments, silicone rings simulated a payload.

Photo by University of Pennsylvania.

Of course, in the latter case, the movement of these devices will have to be controlled. In theory, this is possible with a laser mounted on the rover, which will heat the aircraft at the right intensity and in the right places. In practice, however, there will certainly be a lot of difficulties here. The controlled flight of an object resembling an autumn leaf is not easy. Especially on such a windy planet as Mars, and even in automatic mode (it makes no sense to even provide manual control, because the radio signal would take several minutes to get to the terrestrial antennas).

Nevertheless, researchers are full of optimism. They dream of flying not only on Mars, but also on Pluto, as well as on Neptune's satellite Triton. These are truly Napoleonic plans, considering that not a single spacecraft has ever entered orbit around Neptune or Pluto.

However, the technology can find itself and more mundane (in every sense) application. We are talking about the study of the upper layers of the atmosphere of our planet.

"The Earth's mesosphere is very similar to the Martian atmosphere in terms of density, and we do not currently have any [aircraft capable] of flying there, as it is too low an altitude for space satellites and too high for airplanes and balloons," explains Bargatin.

Researchers would like to have measuring instruments there. The more knowledge we have about the movement of air at these altitudes, the better we can predict changes in the Earth's climate and even the weather, the scientist notes.

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