High-Level Project Summary
The project has two aspects, near earth Mars lander inspired by helicopter seed design and a long range mission to Kepler-452b . The lander explores the physics of mechanical lift. Also genetically designed plants that are sent through space as seeds. Banks of Lazers on earth speed the seeds towards earths sister planet. On arrival they germinate into distinctive mathematical shapes such as the figure of 8 knot. Recognised as 'alien' they will be studied, and junk DNA decoded to read earths Literary content.
Detailed Project Description
Lander project: Originally we conceived of a large single lander, but since modified the idea to a small deployable data collection vehicle which could be launched from a mars orbiter and would be deployed on mass. The base would be a drill shape and it would have 4 wings one for each cardinal directions.
Once the vehicle has entered the atmosphere it would have a upwards normal force applied to the blade due to air resistance and drag of the object, this creates an orthogonal force which in turn produces angular momentum, this would make an upwards lift because of the difference between the negative and positive pressure on the blade. These force then work to exemplify the air resistance/atmospheric forces applied to object. In combination with the low second moment of area of spacecraft, the vehicle would be able to reach a high level of angular momentum allowing it to glide at a much slower rate than a vehicle with a more evenly distributed centre of mass. On landing the object will break the surface of the planet with the leftover angular velocity from descend, breaking the surface would allow it to relay chemical analysis back to deployment vehicle via tiny micro transmitters, then the data can be processed and sent back to earth. All the aspects of the machine are solid and cheep to produce. Many will fail but enough will succeed to convey a broad survey to earth.