India proposes to send its own helicopter to Mars
India has now considering adding its own helicopter to its next Mars mission, dubbed the Martian Boundary Layer Explorer (Marble).
While ISRO’s rotorcraft is still in the conceptual stage, the agency envisions a drone that can fly as high as 100 meters in the thin Martian air. Along with the Marble instrument suite, the drone is expected to carry various sensors, including temperature, humidity, pressure, wind speed, electric field, trace species, and dust sensors.
Whether this mission will include a lander, rover, or orbiter as well is very unclear, which suggests strongly the entire mission profile is presently very much undecided as yet.
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India has now considering adding its own helicopter to its next Mars mission, dubbed the Martian Boundary Layer Explorer (Marble).
While ISRO’s rotorcraft is still in the conceptual stage, the agency envisions a drone that can fly as high as 100 meters in the thin Martian air. Along with the Marble instrument suite, the drone is expected to carry various sensors, including temperature, humidity, pressure, wind speed, electric field, trace species, and dust sensors.
Whether this mission will include a lander, rover, or orbiter as well is very unclear, which suggests strongly the entire mission profile is presently very much undecided as yet.
Readers!
My annual February birthday fund-raising drive for Behind the Black is now over. Thank you to everyone who donated or subscribed. While not a record-setter, the donations were more than sufficient and slightly above average.
As I have said many times before, I can’t express what it means to me to get such support, especially as no one is required to pay anything to read my work. Thank you all again!
For those readers who like my work here at Behind the Black and haven't contributed so far, please consider donating or subscribing. My analysis of space, politics, and culture, taken from the perspective of an historian, is almost always on the money and ahead of the game. For example, in 2020 I correctly predicted that the COVID panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Every one of those 2020 conclusions has turned out right.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are four ways of doing so:
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I think NASA / JPL have demonstrated they know how to do Mars helicopters, and can leave the exploitation of the technology to SpaceX, etc.
Now, how about doing a V-22 type craft? In order to explore Mars by air, we’re going to have to a) land and take off in rough terrain, and b) cruise in between with a big wing at high speed. Moving a fixed wing fast enough to generate sufficient lift in 1/100th the Earth’s atmosphere is probably a lot harder than moving a rotary wing to do the same, I would guess.
Ps. It may turn out to be impossible to do a V-22 effectively. So maybe a point-to-point rocket 🤔?