Mars methane is difficult to hint, however an answer is likely to be on the best way.
An early-stage airplane idea referred to as MAGGIE will quickly kick off a nine-month NASA-funded examine to discover its feasibility for hovering over Mars. It will not go to the Pink Planet any time quickly, if ever, however there is a clear science want for extra flying autos on Mars.
NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter, the primary heavier-than-air car to soar on Mars, completed 72 flights after arriving with the Perseverance rover in February 2021. Whereas Ingenuity had a tough touchdown in January 2024 that grounded it for good, there’s loads of room for extra flying autos sooner or later.
MAGGIE — brief for “Mars Aerial and Floor Clever Explorer” — is designed to function for a Martian 12 months (practically two Earth years) wherever across the Pink Planet. Flying 3,300 ft (1,000 meters) above the floor, certainly one of its prime missions might be discovering methane. That elusive molecule might be an indication of life, however scientists have had little luck determining its presence within the Martian environment after many years of looking out.
Associated: Life after Ingenuity: How scientists hope to succeed in the skies of Mars as soon as extra
Methane, a attainable biosignature fuel, has been laborious to seek out on Mars. It pops up every now and then within the environment, detectable by spacecraft on or orbiting the Pink Planet or by highly effective telescopes right here on Earth. NASA’s long-running Curiosity rover mission (ancestor to Perseverance), for instance, has repeatedly detected methane since 2012, however the ranges go up and down — a background degree of lower than 0.5 components per billion (ppb) molecules of air, generally spiking as much as 20 ppb.
The subsequent logical step might be a flying car like MAGGIE, principal investigator Gecheng Zha instructed House.com. Zha is CEO of Coflow Jet and a professor on the College of Miami who obtained 9 months of funding beneath the NASA Revolutionary Superior Ideas (NIAC) program to discover this idea additional.
MAGGIE might keep within the air for a distance of 111 miles (179 km), its design suggests, on a single cost of its photo voltaic panels. Zha says high-resolution devices on board might select hint quantities of methane within the environment, or different potential transient phenomena like liquid water on Mars. Higher but, “we will additionally land in anywhere we would wish to get samples,” he instructed House.com.
MAGGIE’s presumed vary comes courtesy of patented know-how that might use air compressors to maintain the plane aloft. The air compressors transfer small quantities of environment from the again of the wings towards the entrance, each growing elevate and lowering drag.
This course of would permit MAGGIE to be versatile for various temperatures and pressures of environment, permitting it to navigate the skinny air of Mars throughout completely different seasons and at completely different latitudes, notably throughout difficult seasons like winter. Usually, the Martian environment’s stress is between 6 and 10 millibars, only one one-hundredth of Earth’s floor stress, based on NASA. And in the course of the chilly season, roughly 25% of the environment condenses on the polar caps, inflicting an extra plunge in Pink Planet stress.
Earlier than reaching Mars, MAGGIE should meet the main aim of its NIAC section 1 examine, which is to find out if the airplane might certainly work within the skinny environment of Mars. “We’ll do extra car design and a feasibility examine, and we may also do the science mission,” Zha mentioned, emphasizing that companions equivalent to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California may also be concerned on the science aspect.
Subsequent up, if the preliminary MAGGIE examine goes properly, can be inclusion within the two-year section 2 of NIAC to deepen the engineering and science work. A spread of investigations might fly on the mission, equivalent to analyzing the unusual magnetic subject of Mars, or photographing floor options in excessive definition, relying on the precedence.
Zha has been engaged on the thought behind MAGGIE for greater than 20 years, totally on the engineering aspect. He obtained a number of grants earlier than this one, too, together with NASA funding for a kind of jet stream management, and the Protection Superior Analysis Initiatives Company (DARPA) Award for Aviation Transports.
He was glad to see Ingenuity take flight within the interim: “Once we noticed the Ingenuity helicopter flying, it was very, very thrilling and provoking.” And he is trying ahead to different Martian explorers taking to the skies as quickly as possible.
That might occur comparatively shortly, pending ongoing troubles with funding for NASA’s Mars Pattern Return program. The present idea suggests two helicopter fetchers might journey together with the return mission within the 2030s that might convey caches again from the floor, which had been collected by Perseverance.
