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Zubrin, Robert1, Price, Steve, Gamber, Terry, Clark, Ben, and Cantrell, Jim5 (1993)

The Mars Aerial Platform Mission: A Global Reconnaissance Of The Red Planet Using Super-Pressure Balloons

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The Mars Aerial Platform (MAP) mission is a conceptual design for a low-cost, Discovery class mission whose purpose would be to generate tens of thousands of very high resolution (20 cm/pixel) pictures of the Martian surface, map the global circulation of the Martian atmosphere, and examine the surface and sub-surface with ground penetrating radar, infrared spectroscopy, neutron spectroscopy, and other remote sensing techniques. The data would be acquired by instruments which are carried by balloons flying at a nominal altitude of about 7 km over the Martian surface. Because new balloon and micro-spacecraft technology is now available, the balloon probes could be quite long-lived, lasting hundreds or even thousands of days, producing an immense science harvest in the process. Together with the Mars Environmental Survey (MESUR) surface network science mission, MAP would revolutionize our knowledge of the Red Planet.

1 - Martin Marietta Astronautics Space Dynamics Lab, PO Box 179 Denver, CO 80201 
5 - Utah State University Logan, Utah 84322-4140 

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by Jean Lagarde — last modified 2006-10-22 23:03 Copyright © 1993 Martin Marietta Corp. Published by the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics with permission as AIAA 93-4741. Published to the Marspapers archive with permission.
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