12 settembre 2008
Autonomous Aerobots for Exploration of Titan and Venus
Su segnalazione del buon Martin, ripropongo qui sul blog la descrizione di un progetto molto interessante che sta venendo portato avanti dal Jet Propulsory Laboratory della NASA.
Future Titan and Venus in situ missions are two of the top three priorities in the 2005 Solar System Exploration Roadmap. The choice of an in situ platform is motivated by the dense clouds that completely cover Titan and Venus and thereby limit observations from orbit. The SSE Roadmap recognizes that there are tremendous opportunities for the application of aerial mobility technology to the exploration of both worlds. In particular, the thick atmosphere at Titan and Venus enables the use of compact, self-propelled buoyant vehicles that can access virtually any point of the planet over multi-month time scales with minimal consumption of scarce onboard electrical power. Depending of the level of autonomy incorporated, such an aerobot (robotic balloon) vehicle could acquire a wide spectrum of scientific data ranging from simple aerial imaging to acquisition of surface samples and onboard composition analysis. Even the simpler aerobot technology of drifting (unpropelled) balloons can yield valuable science, especially if the vehicle incorporates long duration flight and/or altitude control capability to do atmospheric profiling and ground approach for surface sampling. Pictures from the Huygens probe dramatically illustrate the utility of low altitude (< 10 km) aerial imagery at Titan, showing river channels and other striking terrain features not visible from orbit. Huygens also confirmed that Titan has very low winds (<1-2 m/s) below 10 km altitude, a feature essential for low-power, self-propelled aerobots to access surface features in a go-to mode of operation.
Any aerobot at Titan and any next generation aerobot for Venus will require new technology. There has been substantial progress in developing the components needed for future Titan and Venus aerobots, but what is lacking is the autonomy development, systems engineering, integration and testing needed to combine the various component advances into TRL 5-6 level prototype vehicles. This task provides a three year effort for doing that by designing, building and testing full scale prototypes of future Titan and Venus aerobots.
Maturation of Titan and Venus aerobot technology is essential to enabling the in situ exploration of these worlds with aerial mobility vehicles. The lack of prior NASA flight experience with planetary aerobots is a significant barrier to acceptance by NASA of mission proposals featuring aerobots at Titan and Venus. This barrier can only be surmounted with successful systems-level prototyping of the kind described.
Detto ciò, chiudo il post di oggi con un’altra segnalazione. Sul Corriere TV è infatti apparso un breve servizietto relativo ai droni, gli aeroplanini sui quali sto lavorando anche io, tanto per capirci. Servizio breve e stupido, ma proprio in quanto tale un’occhiata non gliela si può negare. Questo il link da seguire.
