Mobility For Mars
Global Nominee
Mobility For Mars received a Global Nomination.
Have you ever wanted a rocket pack to soar amongst the sky? Now you can … on Mars… Gravity is less, atmospheric density is less, and the vistas are breathtaking. So come to Mars...
Buck Rogers aside, Mars is an interesting environment for out-of-this-world mobility options for an explorer. This challenge asks for the definition of a conceptual mobility solution to allow an astronaut to easily and rapidly explore Mars including overcoming obstacles such as cliffs, ravines and other difficult terrain. The solution should be person-portable and any means or source of propulsion be locally produced.
This challenge can be answered by:
- producing an app to simulate your adventures in building your jet pack and flying around Mars;
- produce an app that provides the local gravity, atmospheric conditions (density, weather, anything-else-of-interest) to help decide what is needed for your jet pack design;
- perform a feasibility/conceptual study of an actual jet pack design that could use potential Mars fuel sources; or Design and Demonstrate a model scale jet pack using hardware.
In the very near future mankind will set foot on Mars. Getting there is part of a challenge and another part is to find a solution to move about in Mars rocky terrain. Compared to earth mars have almost zero atmosphere and one third of it’s gravity. When figuring out a best solution for mobility we wanted to use these to our advantage. We also had to consider portability of the system so an astronauts can manage it on it’s own. After some researching, our team has decided on few solutions that would work best on Mars terrain.
Our first solution is JetPack. Which usually requires oxygen for ignition. However mars atmosphere do not have adequate oxygen. One solution could have been to carry separate oxygen like rocket engine does. However that would have increased the weight of the whole JetPack. Instead we have decided to use ion based thruster which will use xenon as resources which there are plenty in Mars. Since there is almost no air pressure and reduced gravity ion thrust would be enough for making the JetPack fly along with it's user.
Our second solution is an Exoskeleton. It is made with T6 Aluminium and is very light and yet durable. It lets an astronauts move faster and jump higher. Low gravity also works as an advantage here. We have worked hard to figure out proper physics for the Exoskeleton. The best part of it is that It works on elastic and kinetic energy so it does not require any form of resources and does not expire.
Our last solution is a Segway which runs on solar energy. This is intended to be used on less rocky terrain, however when encountered with small bump it can also jump vertically. The vehicle has a strong spring that allows it to jump and two suspension beside it’s wheel which dampen it’s velocity for a more graceful fall.
Even though we are participating under Technology, our project has solved another advance problem from "Solar System" category, where we have created Mars terrain from actual mars images available via Nasa api. We have used nasa's HeightMap api for Mars and created actual terrain out of it. The bump, crater or mountain you see in the simulation are actually there in Mars. Because of this in our simulation you can explore Mars like never before.
We also wanted to educate people about Mars. Our team have created a game using our simulation where user can collect mars information to know more about it.
We believe our project will not just give ideas to scientist on how to tackle mars mobility issue, it will also teach casual people a lot more regarding mars and science.
Thank you all.
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