Virginia-based Aurora Flight Sciences has been awarded an initial contract to develop an innovative autonomous balloon launcher to operate from the surface of Mars providing future missions atmospheric sampling and video data capture.Aurora envisions a compact lightweight balloon system that could be included on future Mars landers, thereby augmenting the mission with a small aerial vehicle building upon the firms experience in the development of a Mars airplane with NASA Langley Research Center (but not selected for a NASA Mars mission).
The autonomous balloon launcher proposal is similar to the planned Mars Archimedes probe. Archimedes is designed as a helium balloon ten metres in diameter with an onboard suite of scientific instruments to study the atmospheric conditions on Mars. The probe was proposed by the German Mars Society [video].
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