date: 2011 December 7 (Wed) 15:00-16:00
room: CPS Conference Room
speaker: Keisuke Asai (Tohoku University)
organizer: Kou Yamada
title: Planetary Locomotion -New Options for Exploration on Planets
abstract: In the solar system, there are numbers of planets and satellites that have an atmosphere. The satellites like Europa and Titan have oceans with liquid water or methane. To explore these celestial bodies, it is attractive to use "aerial" or "aquatic" means of locomotion. We define these new exploratory options on planets as "planetary locomotion" and propose to conduct cooperative/complementary studies on this topic. In this lecture, the atmospheric conditions on Venus, Mars, and Titan are compared with those on Earth and the requirements for simulating the flight conditions on these bodies are discussed from the view point of similarity in fluid dynamics. In addition, possible approaches to study the performance of wings and rotors in the planetary atmospheres are present, including the experimental approach using wind tunnels.
keywords: Planetary Exploration, Aerial Locomotion, Aquatic Locomotion, Fluid-dynamic Similarity