WASHINGTON: NASA is preparing to send a drone to Mars by 2024 – they’ve already developed a small, lightweight craft that could conduct aerial surveys and identify potential landing areas and zones of interest.
In case you’re wondering, no, this is not a cool boomerang, it may be the first aircraft that flies in the Martian skies (that we know of, at least). NASA has revealed that they have almost finished a prototype for a glider/plane that they will launch later this year. The Prandtl–m will be released at about at 100,000 feet altitude, which will simulate the flight conditions of the Martian atmosphere, said Al Bowers, NASA Armstrong chief scientist and Prandtl-m program manager.
“The aircraft would be part of the ballast that would be ejected from the aeroshell that takes the Mars rover to the planet,” Bowers said.” It would be able to deploy and fly in the Martian atmosphere and glide down and land. The Prandtl-m could overfly some of the proposed landing sites for a future astronaut mission and send back to Earth very detailed high resolution photographic map images that could tell scientists about the suitability of those landing sites.”
Tesla driverless system to use updated radar technology
WASHINGTON: Electric carmaker Tesla announced Sunday it was upgrading its Autopilot software to use more advanced radar technology. In a...
