Abstract
Aerial drones have the capabilities to fill in the exploration gap in areas that current robotic missions to Mars find inaccessible due to steep terrain or heights. However, the Martian atmosphere, with only 0.6% of Earth’s surface density, is a challenging environment to engineer a drone capable of generating enough lift for prolonged flight with rotors. As such, an exploration into using aerostatic lift instead as the main lift generator is important to realising an aerial drone exploration mission on Mars. This thesis will serve as a preliminary exploration of the feasibility of using an airship-like drone for flight on Mars. It will cover the sizing of key specifications of the drone such as its minimum radius, maximum payload, and maximum flight ceiling; how a simplified model’s altitudinal control may perform in terms of its step response, settling time and energy needed. A comparison will be made between the model’s performance on Mars, and at a Mars equivalent range on Earth at 27.5 km. The findings demonstrate that an airship-style drone that utilises aerostatic lift is physically possible with current technology, its expected key specifications and its expected response performance. It also shows that aspects of the performance on Earth can be adapted, with modifications, to simulate performance on Mars and consideration that needs to be made in the adaptation, namely the test height and difference in gravity. Finally, an economically sustainable business development strategy for validating their product was proposed for start-ups that are looking to provide an airship drone product or service for use on Mars. It focuses on validating the drone's performance with field tests done on Earth via focusing on the reapplication of the drone flying at an altitude of 30 km on Earth as a service as a low-cost alternative to satellites.