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Could a fixed wing entomopter with a wingspan of 2 meters actually fly in the Martian atmosphere?

If so, could it reach a flight speed of over 250 mph in the thin atmosphere of Mars?

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1 Answers1

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From that linked Wikipedia page:

Several NASA Research Centers have noted its unique ability to fly on the planet Mars. Fixed wing aerial Mars rovers would have to fly at over 250 mph just to stay aloft in the rarefied Mars atmosphere.

This is for an entomopter with a 15 to 18cm wingspan.

Anthony Colozza's paper at the Ohio Aerospace Institute, has this:

A Mars aircraft with a 1 meter wingspan, would operate at a similar Reynolds number as terrestrial insects. Using the enormous lift producing mechanism of the entomopter may be an effective way to design vehicles capable of flying in the Martian atmosphere. Another advantage is that the reduced Mars gravitational force enables substantially lighter structures.

Georgia Tech Research Institute has confirmed that this concept, on a preliminary level, appears feasible for a Mars application and may, in fact, be easier to accomplish due to vehicle scaling. It would greatly enhance mission capability allowing the vehicle to take off, fly slowly or hover, and land.

So to answer your question, yes, it should be able to fly, but no, it will not fly at 250mph, but considerably slower, which will be a benefit as it can spend more time over target, observing.

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Rory Alsop
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  • Wikipedia only? You must be hiding something from us... – Deer Hunter Aug 04 '13 at 19:27
  • @Deer - gimme 10 minutes and I'll pull up the NASA paper :-) – Rory Alsop Aug 04 '13 at 19:29
  • Suggested refs: Michelson, R.C., and Navqi,, M.A., “Extraterrestrial Flight (Entomopter-Based Mars Surveyor),” Low RE Aerodynamics on Aircraft Including Applications in Emerging UAV Technology, RTO-AVT von Karman Institute for Fluid Dynamics Lecture Series, November 24-28, 2003 and Mars Rotorcraft: Possibilities, Limitations, and Implications For Human/Robotic Exploration http://hdl.handle.net/2060/20090028805 – Deer Hunter Aug 04 '13 at 19:31
  • Can't access the Michelson paper, so grabbed Colozza's instead – Rory Alsop Aug 04 '13 at 19:36
  • Colozza states that it has the capability to "fly slowly", which does not explicitly exclude the capability to fly really fast ... (?) – s-m-e Aug 04 '13 at 21:05
  • @ernestopheles Not specifically, but in general aircraft that fly slowly are terrible at high speeds, and vice versa. Roughly speaking, to fly slowly you need a high lift coefficient to generate sufficient lift to stay airborne at low speed, but that means you have higher lift-induced drag, which cuts into your ability to reach high speeds. Having said that, our definition of "fast" and "slow" are based on Earth's atmospheric density - Mars' thin atmosphere might widen the envelope of speeds a particular craft is capable of. – anaximander Aug 06 '13 at 13:07
  • @anaximander Yes, a widened envelope was kind of what I was thinking about ... – s-m-e Aug 07 '13 at 00:11