mars_balloon_000831 WASHINGTON -- Talk about ballooning expectations. Engineers have demonstrated a new technology that could take flight high over Mars in future years.
The work may lead to a platoon of balloons drifting through the thin Martian atmosphere. They would relay back to Earth outstanding aerial views of a variety of Red Planet wonders.
By taking to the air via a Martian balloon, supporters of the work see a way to out-distance the slow crawl of
ground-bound Martian rovers.Edge of space
At 100,000 feet (30,480 meters) altitude above Colorado farmland on August 26, a solar-heated balloon was successfully inflated using methanol. This balloon could be the key to sending a "roving explorer" that automatically inflates.
The test flight was conducted by Pioneer Astronautics of Lakewood, Colorado. The research is being done under a small business research grant from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.
JPL's Jack Jones (left), Edge of Space Sciences' Mike Manes (center), and Pioneer Astronautics' Robert Zubrin observing telemetry and transmitted video during the flight.
"Everything went right...all at the same time," said Robert Zubrin, the principal investigator at Pioneer Astronautics for this experiment. "We actually did this on the edge of space," he told SPACE.com.
Pump up the volume
Launched from Byers, Colorado -- about 40 miles (65 kilometers) east of Denver -- a large carrier balloon took the Mars technology experiment skyward.
After reaching some 100,000 feet altitude in a little over an hour, the carrier balloons payload -- a 25 cubic foot (0.7 cubic meter), black polyethylene
experimental balloon -- was released from a pint-sized container, then inflated without difficulty in less than a minute."Once the balloon is out of the can, its just sunlight that does the whole trick," Zubrin said.
Zubrin said that at 100,000 feet, you can mimic on Earth the conditions that exist in Mars less dense atmosphere. "At that height, its an excellent simulant for Mars," he said.
By using methanol pre-inserted in the experimental black-coated Mars balloon, solar heat causes the liquid to vaporize, thereby gasifying the balloon autonomously.
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This concept allows the balloon to shrink in size, making it possible that such a craft could fly to the Red Planet as a hitchhiker payload aboard a future Mars orbiter or
lander spacecraft."Small is good," Zubrin said.
From a distance
Inflation of the Mars test balloon was verified by both live television transmissions from the carrier balloon itself, and from video tape that was recovered after landing, about 15 miles (24 kilometers) away from the takeoff zone.
Altitude was measured by
Global Positioning Satellite signals, along with barometric systems that measured the balloons altitude.
This photo, taken at 100,000 feet and transmitted by an on-board television camera, verified the successful Mars balloon inflation in space.
Work on the idea has been underway at Pioneer Astronautics since 1998, Zubrin said, with a number of ground and flight tests already conducted. Earlier air tests encountered numerous problems, he said.
"This was the first flight that we actually got to 100,000 feet, with all the TV cameras working so we could see what was happening. And it worked," Zubrin said.
Scientists will continue to develop Mars balloon technology.
Before years end, an attempt will be made to inflate the Mars test balloon after it is dropped by the carrier balloon,
Zubrin said. That test hop would hasten the day when such a balloon could whisk across Martian skies, he said.Highways of wind
"I believe, myself, that balloons are an extremely promising technology for mobile robotic exploration of Mars," Zubrin said. Balloons can go much faster and cover more terrain than rovers, and have a greater endurance than
a Mars airplane, he said. 
"The winds of Mars are its highways. We've just demonstrated a fine way to take the open road."
Zubrins company has also worked on a tiny microelectronics package that can be carried in the gondola suspended beneath a Mars mini-balloon.
"With this technology, you get a one-day flight," Zubrin said.
Potentially, the balloon-toted equipment could float through Martian sky, covering over 620 miles (1,000 kilometers) in daytime. The balloon mission would end as sunlight diminishes with the ascendance of the Martian night.
During its daylong flight of fancy, the Mars balloon equipment could snap a couple of hundred pictures of scenery, Zubrin said.
Peppering Mars with two dozen or so micro-balloons is feasible. "You could have balloons all over the place," Zubrin said.
Zubrin's concept is not the only idea in the field of Mars ballooning: NASA is looking into a super-pressure balloon that flies for 300 days, basically orbiting the planet.
"The idea here is that any balloon is better than no balloon. And this is a real simple balloon," Zubrin said. "The winds of Mars are its highways. Weve just demonstrated a fine way to take the open road," he said.
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