soaring on Mars?

On Wed, 13 Jan 2021 19:37:23 -0800, John Good wrote:

20-some years ago, AeroVironment proposed a glider for Mars photography.
They got as far as testing a model, as shown in this short video:
http://www.airspacemag.com/videos/ca...esting-a-mars-
airplane_1/

Around the same time Aurora tested a marsplane: this one was a bit bigger
and was designed to fold up to fit one of the standard aeroshells. It was
tested at around 100,000 ft, where air pressure is similar to Martian
ground level, by drolling it from a high altutude balool launched from
Hawaii. I remember talking about it with Bob Parks, who was the Aurora
project member when ARES was being set up and flew it for the high
altitude tests. He joked that if he'd been on the ball he could have
claimed a near-unbeatable FAI speed record when he was flying back to the
islands after a test - he reckoned it had hit around 500 mph early in the
return leg when still very high up.

https://www.nasa.gov/centers/langley..._ARES.htmls://
media.xconomy.com/wordpress/wp-content/images/2007/10/062

https://www.spacedaily.com/news/
marsplane-02b.html15133/1491665020_1004ad04ee.jpg



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Martin | martin at
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