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I would think the atmosphere is too light to support a balloon.

• gambiting 6y ago
  I do remember reading about this - a balloon would work, but it would be absolutely enormous, far larger than anything we can bring into Mars currently. Maybe some day.
  • amelius 6y ago
    Another thing I'm wondering: the drones can probably carry only a small (light) camera, whereas a satellite can carry much more and thus also a much better camera. Wouldn't a satellite+camera be a better option?
    • rtkwe 6y ago
      For a given aperture there's a limit to the angular resolution you can get which means you can only see objects above a certain size from orbit. The highest resolution we had in 2013 had a resolution of ~.3m/pixel. That's too large for anything beyond rough mapping for things like landing or a vague plan for driving. TL;DR a decent camera at <1km is hard to beat from >100km no matter how good the satellite camera is. https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/1140/whats-the-highest-resolution-camera-orbiting-mars-as-of-2013 https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/1140/whats-the-hig...
    • zokier 6y ago
      You mean like HiRISE: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HiRISE https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HiRISE or HRSC: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Resolution_Stereo_Camera https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Resolution_Stereo_Camera
    • deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]