NASA is betting on windbots to further planet exploration

Windbots, wind-borne probes are NASA’s next technology for exploring gas giants like Jupiter or Saturn. What happens when other planets or exploration objects do not offer this great advantage of solid surfaces to land on? The basic model for the windbot is something like a dandelion seed – a probe that harnesses the power of turbulence to drift around Jupiter (or potentially Earth, for that matter).

An icy planet is also fit for the kind of technology at NASA’s disposal.

Just recently, the space probe New Horizons flew past Pluto, after nine years of travelling, to explore the dwarf planet’s properties and moons. Yet, it fails to provide as much data as Mars’s Curiosity Rover for instance. But that’s getting ready to tweak, as NASA accorded a group of medical scientists a 100,000 $ settled by means of the NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts plan. Even the terminology is different as they are called “windbots” instead of robots because they will harness no other resource, neither solar nor nuclear, except wind, to stay aloft in the gas storms of Jupiter.

A team of NASA’s Jet Propulsion laboratory engineers in Pasadena, California wondered if wind-powered robots could be buoyant enough in the clouds of a distant gas plant like Jupiter.

According to researchers, wind on Jupiter frequently changes direction and intensity. The battery-powered probe survived only for an hour before it succumbed to the high temperature and pressure of the planet. Dandelion can stay airborne for a long time.

Indeed, staying aloft would not require more than gusts of wind to harness, regardless of strength or velocity.

The windbots would also need to be able to stay aloft and not fall victim to gravity. “We’ll be exploring this effect on windbot designs”.

He said that if the research team gets it right, multiple windbots could be deployed in a planet’s atmosphere for relatively low cost.