Mars Quadcopter Capable of Autonomous Flight Could Collect Rocks for China’s Sample Return Mission, Experts Suggest

The fast-paced era of space exploration continues to bring groundbreaking innovations and discoveries. Just a few years ago, there had never been a man-made spacecraft flying around in the atmosphere of another planet. It was changed by Mars Perseverance when it carried a drone named Ingenuity, revolutionizing planetary travels.

The China National Space Administration (CNSA) plans an ambitious mission to retrieve the initial samples of Martian rocks to be investigated here on Earth. The Mars Perseverance rover serves as the inaugural stage in this feat, but experts proposed a device to help China in this mission.

Trends in Mars Exploration

During the past decades, human exploration of the red planet has been limited to rovers, landers, and orbiters. The landers are good at getting surface detail and analyzing surface material, while orbiters are great at collecting planet-wide data or data covering huge land swathes. On the other hand, rovers add an extra dimension by exploring the landing area, but they are generally slow and unable to traverse significant distances. They also cannot move over uneven terrain, which gives them limited capabilities.

When the Perseverance rover landed on Mars, it took the Ingenuity drone, more correctly classified as a helicopter. Its wingspan measures 3.9 feet (1.2 meters) from tip to tip of the rotor blades and weighs 4 pounds (1.8 kilograms). Although its range was only 984 feet (300 meters) and its deployment had only completed 66 flights, it could cover 9.3 miles (14.9 kilometers).

Foldable Mars Rotorcraft

A paper was recently published by the Harbin Institute of Technology and the China Academy of Space Technology, where they proposed a quadcopter for use on Mars. In the study "A Mars quadcopter capable of autonomous flight and sample collection: Structure and avionics," the researchers described a device that, unlike Ingenuity, is capable of gathering a sample that weighs up to 3.5 ounces (100g) and returning it to the lander.

To achieve this, the researchers plan to utilize the lofty nature of the Martian atmosphere. It is less than 1% of that on Earth. Hence, the lift generated by a rotor blade is significantly reduced. The blades are oversized by Earth's standards to enable sufficient charge.

China's quadcopter features avionics architecture, deployable structure, and guidance, navigation, and control (GNC) system for autonomous flight control. Its hardware and software design focuses on different flight modes, operational procedures, and a deployment mechanism customized for Mars exploration.

According to the team, the quadcopter boasts a five-module avionics system that augments the device for survival and operation. Additional features include a navigation approach that merges inertial systems with binocular vision. Meanwhile, the guidance system enables autonomous planning of exploration tasks.

Alternative approaches were proposed on earlier designs, such as the airplane-based Astroplane, which has a wingspan of 68.9 feet (21 meters), or the MAP MarsFlyer, which has a wingspan of 5.7 feet (1.73 meters). Both styles were discounted due to issues with the construction availability of take-off and landing sites. The research team believed that rotorcraft were the correct configuration, leading them to design something that could retrieve and transport rock samples for return missions to Earth.