NASA to pitch plan
for plane on Mars
February 1, 1999
by Paul Hoversten
WASHINGTON -- NASA wants to launch and fly a robot
plane on Mars in 2003, a feat that would put mankind's
first aircraft on another world.
Mars flight:
NASA wants to fly a robot plane
to explore Mars. This is an artist's
conception of what the plane might look like.
The aircraft hasn't been designed yet. |
The $ 40 million project is expected to be announced
today as part of NASA's budget request for fiscal 2000,
USA TODAY has learned.
Congress first must approve the project, which is
included in NASA's overall $ 13.6 billion budget. Odds
of passage are considered good.
NASA would solicit bids from industry and its own
centers to design and build the plane as part of a
U.S.-French "micro-mission" to explore Mars.
The winning bidder would have to figure out how to
engineer a craft to fly through the martian atmosphere.
No one knows what the plane would look like. It is a
task no less daunting than the one faced by Orville and
Wilbur Wright. The Wrights made the first powered flight
of an aircraft that could carry humans Dec. 17, 1903, at
Kitty Hawk, N.C., traveling 120 feet in 12 seconds.
High among the problems of a Mars flight are the
conditions in the planet's atmosphere, vastly different
from what Earth aircraft encounter.
The martian atmosphere is 95% carbon dioxide with
only trace amounts of the nitrogen and oxygen so
plentiful in Earth's atmosphere. Mars' atmospheric
pressure is less than one one-hundredth that of Earth's,
and its gravity about one-third of ours. Mars also has
winds up to 80 mph, low-level fog and dust storms that
can rage locally, regionally or even globally.
NASA planners envision that the drone would be
launched on a French Ariane 5 commercial rocket inside a
container about the size of a computer terminal. The
folded-up aircraft would have to be compact in order to
meet the container's 440-pound weight limit.
"You're going to need one heck of a wingspan," NASA's
space science chief Ed Weiler says. "It's going to look
like all wings, but it still has to fold up into that
small box."
A heat-resistant "aero-shell" would protect the
airplane on its way through the martian atmosphere. Then
the shell would drop off, and the airplane's wings would
unfold, so it could robotically fly -- either powered or
gliding -- to a landing on the surface.
The plane's maneuvers in flight would have to be
programmed before its launch. Scientists could not
operate it by remote control once it reached Mars
because signals sent from Earth would take at least 8
minutes to reach it.
A camera and instruments on board would measure Mars'
chemical composition, its magnetic and electrical fields
and differences in its gravity. The data may help
scientists better understand Mars' evolution and whether
water, a necessary ingredient for life, is present under
the surface.
An aircraft on Mars would fill the data gap between
orbiting satellites and spacecraft that land on the
surface.
Satellites hundreds of miles up can study large
swaths of the planet but only at a somewhat fuzzy view.
Landers on the surface can see features in much greater
detail but only in one small area at a time.
The idea of flying a plane on Mars dates back 20
years. A team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in
Pasadena, Calif., built an engine-powered prototype in
the late 1970s.
"It looked like a sailplane," recalls team leader Lou
Friedman, now executive director of the Planetary
Society in Pasadena. "But you've got to start someplace.
The Wright brothers began with 12 seconds. I think the
first flight on Mars will be longer than the first
flight on Earth was."
The 2003 target is purely serendipitous, NASA says.
That's the next time Mars is favorably aligned for
spacecraft launches from Earth.
Such planetary lineups occur about every two years.
"It's a fantastic way to celebrate the Wright
centennial," Friedman says.
