Aerobots and Hopping Vehicles for Exploration of Planetary Extreme Environments
A special issue of Aerospace (ISSN 2226-4310). This special issue belongs to the section "Astronautics & Space Science".
Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 October 2022) | Viewed by 23367
Special Issue Editor
Interests: space robotics; spacecraft swarms; extreme environment exploration; neural networks; evolutionary computation; fuel cell power supplies; planetary rovers; spacecraft trajectory design; on-orbit servicing; docking; In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU)
Special Issue Information
Dear colleagues,
Planetary exploration has advanced from the use of flyby spacecraft to orbiters to landers and to rovers. Lander and rovers have enabled in situ investigation, providing detailed pictures and enabling advanced experiments on the local rocks and regolith. However, due to limitations with current robotic landing systems, these landers and rovers can only land on relatively flat, benign terrain. Rovers, in turn, have advanced in size and mobility, enabling them to traverse kilometers over an entire mission. However, all these platforms are limited from exploring extreme and rugged environments such as crater walls, cliffs, canyons, and caves. Now, next-generation aerobot platforms are being proposed and built to fly off-world. These include a miniature helicopter supporting Perseverance Mars rover and quadcopter called Dragonfly to explore Titan. Others have proposed lighter-than-air vehicles, particularly balloons and airships that will float in the atmosphere for weeks or months and travel over and into rugged environments and complex atmospheres of Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune. Another breed of aerobot platforms includes sailplanes. Sailplanes exploit local wind and thermals in the atmosphere to gain kinetic energy. Together with aerobot platforms are increasingly sophisticated hopping vehicles that are being proposed for achieving mobility in low-gravity environments such as asteroids, comets, and moons. In these environments, gravity is too low for conventional wheeled vehicles to gain traction, and hence, hopping is a viable technique to achieve higher speeds and greater range. Together, these new generations of aerobots and hopping platforms promise to extend the reach and capabilities of future planetary missions.
Prof. Dr. Jekanthan Thangavelautham
Guest Editor
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