According to the new wind-beautiful tests of small prototypes conducted by an international association of young scientists, the wind speed on Mars is sufficient to blow up a fleet of large circular rovers similar to the tumblved on the surface of the red planet.
“Now we have experimental verification that tumbleved rovers can actually operate and collect scientific data Mars planet“James King of the University of Technology in the Netherlands and the head of Science in Team Tumblweed said. statement,
The idea behind the Tumbleweed project is to design low -cost robots. Rovers Which can cover the great health of the martian surface during the air is fully operated.
See here
While the final employed Tumbleweed Rovers will be 16 feet (five meters) in April 2025, Team Tumbleweed tested a half -sized prototype called tumblved science tested in an disqualified mine in the Netherlands. The team proved that even off-the-shelf instruments could collect environmental data, while roughly collided in the Rover area.
Then, in July 2025, Team Tumbalved turned to the planetary environmental facility of the University of Aerhas in Denmark to test the small 11.8-, 15.7- and 19.7-inch (30-, 40- and 50-gram) prototypes in a wind tunnel.
Prototypes were spherical wire frames including sails; In the wind tunnel, they were placed through their pace on various surfaces, including some other smooth areas, sand, pebbles and boulder fields. They were then blown at different air speeds and all under pressure from low surface of 17 mbers to mimic the conditions on the red planet.
The tests showed that the wind speed was low as 30 to 33 feet per second (9 to 10 meters per second), which was sufficient to push the tumblweed rovers, while the onboard sensors managed to capture the data because the rovers became tumbles. Prototypes were also capable of climbing only 11.5 degrees of slopes by air. While it is not very standing, it was inside Earth‘S Gravity – In the lower gravity of Mars, it will be equal to 30 degrees slopes.
Mirio Joao Karwalho de Pinto Balso, who will work on Tumbalweed Rovers Mars, provides great insight to this, “Experiments with prototypes in the Aarhas wind tunnel have provided great insight, which is a team scientist in the Tambalvid, as the results are scientists in the team of Tambalvid, as the team is scientific. The weight of the scaled prototypes used is exaggerated compared to the actual thing, so the threshold wind speed to set the rovers rolling may be even lower. “
This is good news for the possible success of Real Tumbalved Rovers on Mars. Although the measurement sketches of nearby wind speed on Mars are from NASA insight Lander was often shaken by strong winds more than 6.2 miles (10 kilometers) per second, while Simplicity The helicopter also measured the winds of equal strength.
“The results of the Aaras support our modeling, which indicates that an average tumbleweed rover – daily shift and air cycle after day -night cycles – can travel about 422 kilometers [262 miles] More than 100 martians with an average overall speed of about 0.36 km, [0.22 miles] Per hour, “Balsemo said.” In favorable conditions, the maximum limit can be up to 2,800 kilometers. ,
Flocks of Tumbleweed Rovers can change our discovery of the red planet, which are capable of taking environmental data simultaneously from innumerable places to create wide maps of atmospheric and surface processes. At the end of their roving missions they can also fall as stable platforms that can continue taking data for many years.
The next step of the team is for the head of the Atacama desert in Chile in November to tested the prototype with more sensitive equipment whether they can collect accurate data while Rovers tamble in the area. Although currently the Tumbalved Rover is not adopted as a mission by any space agencies, by developing technology, it puts the project in the future in the future which is chosen to go to Mars.
The latest tumbleweed update was presented by King’s Station in the joint Europelanet Science Congress -AAS Division of Planetary Science Meeting in Helsinki in September.
