First airplane designed for Mars
Artist's concept of the ARES Mars airplane flying over Mars. (NASA)
DB: This is Earth & Sky. Since the 1960s, scientists have explored the planet Mars using orbiting space probes, landers and rovers.
JB: Now they hope to send a robotic airplane to fly in the skies of Mars, in a mission called ARES. Space probes have sent back data about large areas of Mars, but they can’t see fine detail. Rovers and landers have investigated the tiniest rocks and grains of martian sand, but only in small areas.
Joel Levine: Now ARES, we believe, has the best of both worlds because ARES flies hundreds of miles at one kilometer above the surface, that’s 6/10ths of a mile. So it’s close to the surface. It gets high resolution spatial measurements as we fly and we cover vast distances: hundreds of kilometers during the flight.
DB: That’s Joel Levine of the ARES Project. He said an airplane flying above Mars could help determine if methane emissions from the surface of Mars come from natural processes or living things.
JB: It could also map water distributions and help scientists reconstruct the history of the ancient martian magnetic field. So far, models of a Mars airplane have been built and tested in wind tunnels and dropped from weather balloons high above Earth. Levine says an airplane might fly over Mars as early as the year 2012.
DB: Special thanks to NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission. We’re Block and Byrd for Earth & Sky.
Read about the proposed ARES mission to Mars.
See ARES pictures, videos and animations.
Another advantage of an airplane on Mars is that it could go places rovers can’t. Joel Levine said, “ARES by virtue of it being an aerial platform flying through the atmosphere has the capability of flying over regions that rovers can’t get to because of inherent dangers in going up mountains or going into craters and canyons.”
ARES can sample the air and measure gases such as methane and water vapor. So it may be able to explain at least one mystery. A European space probe discovered methane emissions from the martian surface. Since methane is most commonly created by living things. Scientists have wondered if they’ve indirectly discovered life. ARES might provide them an answer. ARES can also help answer questions about the distribution of water on Mars and the history of the martian magnetic field.
Our thanks to:
Joel Levine
NASA Langley Research Center
Science Directorate
Hampton, VA
