NASA Creates Robot Drones to Prospect the Moon and Mars for Resources (VIDEO)

First Posted: Aug 06, 2015 07:20 AM EDT

Resources aren't easy to find on the moon or Mars, and that's why NASA is building drones to find them. The space agency is working on prototypes of flying robotic vehicles that may be able to access hard-to-reach places on these worlds and explore them more fully.

The quadcopter-like robots are called Extreme Access Flyers (EAF). They're meant to act as "prospecting robots" on different worlds.

"This is a prospecting robot," said Rob Mueller, senior technologist for advanced projects at Swamp Works with NASA, in a news release. "The first step in being able to use resources on Mars or an asteroid is to find out where the resources are. They are most likely in hard-to-access areas where there is permanent shadow. Some of the crater walls are angled 30 degrees or more, and that's far too steep for a traditional rover to navigate and climb."

The EAFs are designed to travel into the shaded regions of a crater and pull out small amounts of soil to see whether it holds water-ice promised by orbiting spacecraft. Running on propellants made from the resources on distant worlds, the robots would be able to execute hundreds of explorative missions.

The EAFs would have enough propellant to fly for several minutes on the moon or Mars. However, they would have hours available on an asteroid.

"The flight control systems of commercially available small, unmanned multi-rotor aerial vehicles are not too dissimilar to a spacecraft controller," said Mike DuPuis, one of the researchers. "That was the starting point for developing a controller."

Currently, the researchers are working on a prototype of the machines that will be sent to other planets. However, it may take quite some time before this mission takes flight.