When Will A Balloon Be Sent? Options

[pioneer]

I've heard for some time of sending a balloon or blimp to Mars. Are they all just proposals or does NASA actually have a mission planned for one?

[djellison]

It's not an easy thing to do at mars - very little payload due to the thin atmosphere. Thre have been suggestions, but no actual firm plans

Doug

[Guest_Sunspot_*]

Don't forget the aeroplanes too.......

http://marsairplane.larc.nasa.gov/

[ljk4-1]

To quote:

To survey areas of the planet that remain unknown, researchers affiliated with the privately financed German Mars Society in Munich are proposing a different kind of explorer: a vehicle inspired more by dirigibles like the Hindenburg than by land-rover predecessors. Projected to reach Mars in 2009, the balloon craft, named Archimedes, would hover much closer to the planet's surface than a satellite, snapping crisp, full-color images similar to those that an Earth photographer might take from a helicopter.

Full article here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/13/science/...=th&oref=slogin

[Guest_Zvezdichko_*]

Airplanes must be lightweight, with bigger wings and a powerful lightweight engine ( the thin atmosphere says why). It could be well used for exploration of the polar terrain...
I'd like to ask you what you think about the nanorobot concept - a bee-like machine capable of flying (or roving), carrying a small camera. This is not a new concept, but I don't know how communications will work. Communication with an orbiter will be difficult, because the nanorobot (probably) can't store a large ammount of information. If there's a surface station ( a lander ), it should be easier, but I don't see how far the nanorobot will travel.

[helvick]

The general concept of a nanobot and/or autonomous sensor "mote(s)" is a good one but the reality is a long way off. We're now beginning to see the initial real world sampling of long lived ultra low power signalling (embedded sensors using Zigbee for comms for example) but we have yet to see even a demonstration of a truly tiny long lived mobile sensor. Best case you will see these on another planet 10 years after you see the basic technology in widespread use here.

There are other tradeoffs in going tiny too even when you have dealt with the above issues - power will always be highly constrained so for example data bandwidth out of (and to a lesser extent in to) the device will be very tightly constrained. Without a truly revolutionary power source we're talking devices with bit rates in the order of bits/sec or less rather than K\M\G bits/sec.

[Marz]

To quote:

To survey areas of the planet that remain unknown, researchers affiliated with the privately financed German Mars Society in Munich are proposing a different kind of explorer: a vehicle inspired more by dirigibles like the Hindenburg than by land-rover predecessors. Projected to reach Mars in 2009, the balloon craft, named Archimedes, would hover much closer to the planet's surface than a satellite, snapping crisp, full-color images similar to those that an Earth photographer might take from a helicopter.

Full article here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/13/science/...amp;oref=slogin

Archimedes is well on its way to reality; except the projected launch has been pushed back two years:

"The probe is planned to be integrated into the AMSAT's P5-A Mars satellite, and to be released from the spacecraft when in orbit around the planet. Launch of the P5-A is currently planned for late 2011 as a piggyback payload on an Ariane V rocket"...

German Mars Society

They just completed a test launch aboard an old Nike missile last Thursday!

http://archimedesproject.blogspot.com/2008...on-summary.html

[Ulysses]

The most promising was a CNES project, which was sadly cancelled at an advanced stage:

THE MARS AEROBOT EFFORT

* After the success of the Venus VEGA balloons, Blamont focused on a more ambitious balloon mission to Mars, to be carried on a Soviet space probe.

The atmospheric pressure on Mars is about 150 times less than that of Earth. In such a thin atmosphere, a balloon with a volume of 5,000 to 10,000 cubic meters (178,500 to 357,000 cubic feet) could carry a payload of 20 kilograms (44 pounds), while a balloon with a volume of 100,000 cubic meters (3,570,000 cubic feet) could carry 200 kilograms (440 pounds).

The French had already conducted extensive experiments on Earth with solar Montgolfieres, performing over 30 flights from the late 1970s into the early 1990s. The Montgolfieres flew at an altitude of 35 kilometers, where the atmosphere was as thin and cold as it would be on Mars, and one spent 69 days aloft, circling the Earth twice.

Early concepts for the Mars balloon featured a "dual balloon" system, with a sealed hydrogen or helium-filled balloon tethered to a solar Montgolfiere. The light-gas balloon was designed to keep the Montgolfiere off the ground at night. During the day, the Sun would heat up the Montgolfiere, causing the balloon assembly to rise.

Eventually, the group decided on a cylindrical sealed helium balloon with an envelope made of Mylar, and with a volume of 5,500 cubic meters (196,000 cubic feet). The balloon would rise when heated during the day and sink as it cooled at night.

Total mass of the balloon assembly was 65 kilograms (143 pounds), with a 15 kilogram (33 pound) gondola and a 13.5 kilogram (30 pound) instrumented guiderope. The balloon was expected to operate for ten days. Unfortunately, although considerable development work was performed on the balloon and its subsystems, Russian financial difficulties pushed the Mars probe out from 1992; then to 1994; and then to 1996. The Mars balloon was dropped from the project due to cost constraints, and the probe was lost on launch in 1996 anyway.

Source

More detailed info (but in French) can be found here.