Instant Glider: Just add Light

Wow you know I'm always amazed at some solutions people come up with. I only wish I could work with people this smart. Well it seems that some real smart people at the University of Kentucky are working with NASA and a few others to make a glider that may someday fly over Mars. Only one problem how to you get a glider big enough to fly over the surface into a small enough package for the journey. Well read on and learn how they solved the problem by harnessing the sun as a reacting agent.

A glider soaring over the surface of Mars could take a much closer look than an orbiting satellite, while also covering much more territory than Sojourner-like rovers.

But Mars's atmosphere is very thin--less than 1% as dense as the Earth's--so a glider would need very long, thin wings to stay aloft. With traditional rigid wings, even a master of origami could only fold them so small. To pack the glider into as small a package as possible for launch, some researchers are exploring the idea of "blow up" wings that inflate when needed. It's an elegant solution to the problem of bulk, but it presents a different problem of its own. Flexing of the inflatable wings during flight makes the glider unstable, and this flexing is particularly bad for the long, thin wings needed for Mars. To get rigid wings out of an inflatable package, the students are using a little chemical wizardry to stiffen the wings after inflation. All they need is a little help from the Sun.

Want to learn more. You can find the whole article here.