Aerial Regional-scale Environmental Survey


The Aerial Regional-scale Environmental Survey was a proposal by NASA's Langley Research Center to build a powered aircraft that would fly on Mars. The ARES team sought to be selected and funded as a NASA Mars Scout Mission for a 2011 or 2013 launch window. However, the MAVEN mission was chosen instead. ARES was chosen as one of four finalists in that program.
ARES would have traveled to Mars compactly folded into a protective aeroshell; upon entry in the thin atmosphere, the capsule would have deployed a parachute to decelerate, followed by ARES release at altitude.
Among other things, the aircraft would have investigated the atmosphere and weak magnetic field.

Design

ARES would transit to Mars via a cruise stage and enter the Martian atmosphere in a traditional aeroshell with heat shield. At the right altitude it would unfold itself into its flight configuration. Propulsion would likely have come from a bipropellant rocket engine, which was a focus over other types of propulsion during its development, but propulsion remained undetermined. The two main criteria used to evaluate the propulsion system were flight range and implementation risk. Possible propulsion technologies were electrical motors, internal combustion and rocket systems. The aircraft was intended to fly for about one hour.