Abstract
A Mars flight vehicle could provide a third-dimension for ground-based rovers and supplement orbital observation stations, providing a much more detailed aerial view of the landscape as well as unprecedented survey of the atmosphere of Mars. However, flight on Mars is a difficult proposition due to the very low atmospheric density, which is approximately 1.3% of sea level density on Earth. While traditional aircraft efficiency suffers in the low Reynolds number environment, insect inspired flapping wing flyers on Mars might be able to take advantage of the same lift enhancing effects as insects on Earth. The present work investigates the feasibility of using a bioinspired, flapping wing flight vehicle to produce lift in an ultra-low-density Martian atmosphere. A four-wing prototype, inspired by a prior computational study, was placed in an atmospheric chamber to simulate Martian density. Lift and wing deformation were simultaneously recorded. In Earth density conditions, the passive pitch wing deflection increased monotonically with flapping frequency. On the other hand, in the Martian density environment, the passive pitch deflection angles were very erratic. The measured lift peaked at around 8 grams at 16 Hz. These measurements suggest that sufficient aerodynamic forces for hover on Mars can be generated for a 6-gram flapping wing vehicle. Also, the performance can potentially be improved by better understanding the fluid-structure interaction in ultra-low Mars density condition.