Inflatable Tumbleweed on Mars

Dr. Kim Kuhlman, a Senior Scientist at PSI, is Principal Investigator of the Tumbleweed project. This is a novel means of taking advantage of common Martian winds to push inflatable or deployable-structure vehicles to conduct long-range surveys over the Martian surface. Dr. Kuhlman has put together a team of scientists and engineers including two NASA centers and several academic and private institutions to design a fleet of instrumented Tumbleweeds for missions of opportunity. These would fill a critical niche between investigations of Mars at very large scales from orbit and very small scales by rovers or landers. Covering large areas, a fleet of Tumbleweeds could search for in situ resources or signatures of life, at low cost and low power. Video clip courtesy of Dr. Alberto Behar, JPL. [Read more]

[Past cover pictures and captions]