by Dr Graham Mann
As in many terrestrial applications, there are good reasons to think that small, highly maneuvrable drones would be valuable to human explorers on Mars. They could be used for scouting difficult or dangerous terrain, aerial photography for EVA safety and maintenance inspection purposes, hoisting antenna wires, fast location of small science targets and rapidly transporting small tools, instruments, circuit boards or regolith samples. In 2014 MSA field trials of Mars astronaut-assistance robots, a small Phantom quadrotor performed as well or better than the ground robots in many tasks.
Very low atmospheric densities and temperatures as well as windblown fine dust make flight in the Martian atmosphere a severe challenge for rotorcraft. To provide sufficient lift, even allowing for one third the gravity of Earth, rotors need to be larger and turn much faster than their terrestrial counterparts. That puts a lot of stress on the rotors. Combined with poor...
