AEROBOT
Agencies working for NASA use this term for a lighter-than-air craft designed to explore the planets. An aerobot is a helium-filled balloon fitted with heaters that are powered by solar cells. During the day, solar energy will heat the helium and give it extra buoyancy; at night, the balloon will drop to lower altitudes or even touch the ground. A limitation of the design is that its movements cannot be fully controlled, though it may have some ability to dictate its altitude, perhaps through dropping ballast, releasing gas or managing its temperature. A big advantage of this design is that it doesn’t need fuel, which is expensive to transport and which runs out all too soon. Unlike satellites, aerobots fly in the atmosphere, so allowing experiments to be carried out on its chemistry. They can also view and record the ground from much lower altitudes than is possible with satellites. NASA plans to send a device of this sort to Mars in 2003, and possibly later to Titan, Venus and Jupiter. The problem with Mars is that its atmosphere is so thin, a tiny fraction of that of Earth. But space scientists are going for Mars first because it is the most accessible, and because if they can make the technology work there, it will work elsewhere. The word combines the prefix aero-, as in aeronautics, with bot, a common abbreviated form of robot.
The Martian aerobot will be based on a “superpressure” helium balloon, designed to maintain a constant volume so that its height above ground can be controlled by on-board intelligence rather than external temperature.
[Scotsman, Jan. 1998]
If they prove themselves on Mars, balloons — or aerobots, as lighter-than-air craft are known in the space business — could be sent to Venus, to Saturn’s moon Titan and beyond.
[New Scientist, Oct. 1998]
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