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All robotic missions on Mars have been express to the actual surface — rovers like Curiosity are reliable, but their range is limited. While Curiosity has driven more than x miles on the Martian surface, it took more than five years. A flying drone aircraft could cover much more than distance, merely developing a Mars drone is no piece of cake feat. NASA has partnered with several private organizations and nonprofits to exam some flying machines in the nigh Martian landscape on Earth: a desolate island in the Canadian Arctic.

The new project is spinning up at NASA's Haughton Mars Project facility on Devon Island, which is the largest uninhabited isle on Earth. It'southward uninhabited considering of the harsh conditions — it'south what'south known every bit a polar desert. The growing flavor is only a few weeks long, and the rest of the year it gets dangerously common cold with temperatures as depression as -58 degrees Fahrenheit. NASA prepare a Mars examination facility on Devon Island in the 1990s because of how similar the terrain is to the red planet. The site is located in the Haughton impact crater, a 14-mile low that was created about 39 million years ago.

Joining NASA in this endeavor are the Mars Institute, the SETI Institute, and FYBR Solutions Inc. By sharing the workload with its partners, NASA hopes it will be able to develop a drone design on Earth that also works reliably on Mars. The surface of the Haughton impact crater is perfect for this testing, merely it'due south still on Earth. Mars has a much thinner atmosphere that complicates unmanned missions. There's enough of an atmosphere that landers demand protection from the heat of entry, but not plenty to use parachutes or standard wing configurations.

One of the leading proposals right at present is to develop an extremely lightweight helicopter that would behave a simply camera and musical instrument package every bit a "picket drone" for the Mars 2020 rover. It would need to have huge propellers in relation to its size, though. The drone could map terrain surrounding the rover to identify obstacles so operators can move the rover greater distances with each set up of instructions. It could also help spot the interesting areas where the rover might exist used to take samples and conduct enquiry.

The 2020 rover is expected to be based on Curiosity, but information technology'll have more than cameras. If the research at the Haughton Mars Projection site pays off, information technology may even take its own little drone.