Walking Balloons: The Future of Exploration on Titan and Earth’s Seafloor?
Innovative methods for exploring other celestial bodies always captivate the space exploration community. At UT, we’ve reported on a variety of concepts, from robots that cling to Martian cave walls to those that hop using jets of locally mined gas. Now, we turn to the idea of a balloon that “walks.” This concept is the basis of BALloon Locomotion for Extreme Terrain, or BALLET, a project led by Hari Nayar, a Principal Roboticist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and his colleagues.
How exactly does a balloon “walk”? By lifting and moving one of its six feet. BALLET’s design features a positively buoyant balloon supporting six “feet” attached to adjustable cables. These feet contain small science packages capable of taking surface samples or analyzing the chemical composition of the ground they touch.
Each foot is connected to three cables, individually controlled by pulleys. When a foot has completed its task at a given location, BALLET retracts the cables, lifting the foot off the surface. It then extends the cables to place the foot in a new location.
Preliminary research on this concept was conducted under a NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC) grant in 2018. This research indicated that lifting two opposing feet simultaneously ensures the balloon’s stability. It also demonstrated that Titan is an ideal location for this technology.
While balloon locomotion is often considered for places like Venus, where it could float in Earth-like atmospheric conditions, controlling a payload on the ground in such an environment would be challenging. Venus’s harsh conditions near the surface would also make the material requirements untenable. Mars, with its high wind speeds and sparse atmosphere, presents similar challenges for controlling a balloon.
Titan, however, offers a stable, thick atmosphere where a negatively buoyant balloon could operate feasibly. The stable environmental conditions on Titan would prevent BALLET from being blown around, making it ideal for exploring features like cryovolcanoes and methane lakes. BALLET could traverse difficult terrain without the limitations faced by rovers or helicopters, such as those planned for the Dragonfly mission.
There are still many design considerations, such as controlling variables like balloon orientation, cable length for each of the 18 cables, and pathfinding. Although the Phase I project is complete, further funding from NASA has not been secured.
BALLET also has potential applications on Earth. One immediate possibility is collecting “nodules” in undersea mining operations. Given the increasing demand for cobalt and other materials found in these nodules, and the environmental damage caused by traditional mining techniques, this space exploration idea might find practical use on Earth before it does in space.
Source: Walking Balloons: The Future of Exploration on Titan and Earth’s Seafloor?
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