Could we get a flying drone down there?
What does it take to make flight happen on Mars? The air is thinner, so would more force be required for airplanes and helicopters to fly? How well would hot-air or helium inflatables work, compared to Earth?
What does it take to make flight happen on Mars? The air is thinner, so would more force be required for airplanes and helicopters to fly? How well would hot-air or helium inflatables work, compared to Earth?
See e.g.:
Noth A., Engel W., Siegwart R. Recent Progresses on the Martian Solar Airplane Project Sky-Sailor In Proceedings of the 9th ESA Workshop on Advanced Space Technologies for Robotics (ASTRA 2006), Noordwick, Netherland, 2006. [http://www.sky-sailor.ethz.ch/docs/Sky-Sailor-ASTRA2006_Noth...]
Noth, A., Bouabdallah, S., Michaud, S., Siegwart, R. and Engel, W. SKY-SAILOR Design of an autonomous solar powered martian airplane. In Proceedings of the 8th ESA Workshop on Advanced Space Technologies for Robotics, (ASTRA 2004), Noordwick, Netherland,2004. [http://www.sky-sailor.ethz.ch/docs/Sky-Sailor-ASTRA2004_Noth...]
Noth, A., Engel, W. and Siegwart, R. Flying Solo and Solar to Mars - Global Design of a Solar Autonomous Airplane for Sustainable Flight. IEEE Robotics & Automation Magazine, Volume 13, Issue 3, pp 44-52, Sept. 2006. [http://www.sky-sailor.ethz.ch/docs/Flying_Solo_and_Solar_to_...]
See http://www.sky-sailor.ethz.ch/ as well for more.
[1] - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4YQBuuhh76A&feature=play...
To transport and ensure it's operational by the time it gets there, might be a completely different matter, though.