Another half-baked UK Mars mission in the making?

Mars hopper concept ‘is feasible’

A UK team is developing its idea for a Mars “hopper” – a robot that can bound across the surface of the Red Planet.

At the moment, landing missions use wheels to move around, but their progress can be stymied by sand-traps, steep slopes and boulder fields.

A hopper would simply leap across these obstacles to the next safest, flat surface.

The research group is led from Leicester University and the Astrium space company.

They propose the use of a vehicle powered by a radioisotope thermal rocket engine.

It would work like this: carbon dioxide would be extracted from the Martian air, compressed and liquefied.

Pumped into a chamber and exposed to the intense heat from a radioactive source, the CO2 would then explosively expand through a nozzle.

Calculations suggest the thrust achieved could enable a one-tonne craft to leap a distance of up to 900m at a time.

“The advantage of this approach is that you have the ability to traverse more aggressive terrains but also that you have wider mobility – the possibility of traversing much greater distances than we have with even the very successful rovers,” says Hugo Williams, from Leicester’s Space Research Centre.

Imagine jumping into and out of craters and canyons, and taking samples from locations that are separated perhaps by many tens of kilometres.

Full report: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-24213830

can you attach a snakebot to it?

I like that idea.

One of the Google X-prize entrants would use a small amount of rocket power to jump around the surface. I once proposed a small ball-shaped lander that would bounce around the surface.

But the new Leicester University idea is more advanced than either of those.

a ball shape would be good for stability but terrible for dust, any camera looking out a port you might have looking out would get covered in dust

Let’s be optimistic