NASA JPL Tumbleweed rover for planetary exploration
- Paper number
IAC-07-A3.4.03
- Author
Mr. Jonas Jonsson, The Angstrom Laboratory, Sweden
- Coauthor
Dr. Alberto Behar, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, United States
- Coauthor
Mr. Fabien Nicaise, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, United States
- Coauthor
Mr. Ralph D. Lorenz, The John Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory, United States
- Year
2007
- Abstract
Planetary exploration rovers should be tough constructions able to travel swift and long distance over surfaces. This generally also means big and heavy, something one wants to avoid when launching missions into space. The Tumbleweed rover will use a small set of instruments and electronics at the core of an inflatable spherical outer hull. Deflated this is a small and light package, easily launched to a distant world. Well there the hull inflates into a large spherical ball which will move over rocks and out of craters powered only by the wind, making its scientific measurements along the way. The motion can be controlled by regulating the inflation of the hull, even being able to stop at a certain spot. To take Mars as an example, the winds there are strong but the atmosphere is also thinner than that of Earth. For its movement, the force that acts on the Tumbleweed rover from the wind corresponds to the cross-sectional area of the rover, the larger the diameter the larger the force. The Tumbleweed rover, especially the electronics and the inflatable material, needs also to withstand the harsh conditions of the planetary body on which it is to be deployed. The Tumbleweed rover would be able to carry with it instruments also carried by a conventional rover such as imaging, temperature, pressure, magnetometer to detect local magnetic anomalies (buried meteorites or tectonic plate shifting) and ground penetrating radar, scanning the surroundings for minerals and ice. The Tumbleweed rover concept is currently under development at JPL. On Greenland a prototype version was tested and during two days traversed a distance of 130 km over the frozen landscape. During the journey the rover sent back data of its position and the environmental conditions through an Iridium satellite network connection. Last year another prototype tumbleweed rover was tested in the desert of Arizona with a new type of inflatable outer hull. Wind models during the deployment were made with wind anemometers and GPS data which helped describe the path taken. Hostile worlds for using this concept to explore the surface would be our own Earth, Mars, Venus, Jupiter’s moon Io (through supersonic volcanic winds), Saturn’s moon Titan, Neptune’s moon Triton (which has signs of significant surface wind erosion) and any other planetary object where a blowing wind could carry the rover across the surface.
- Abstract document