DOME - Drone Operations for Martian Environment Information

The DOME Project (Drone Operations for Martian Environment) is a research group, built between universities and companies which aims at developing new remote and autonomous operated aerial platforms for the Environment of the Mars surface. Aerial drone platforms are a cutting-edge technology asset in a huge range of human operations such as medical, firefighting and military scenarios. In extraplanetary exploration, aerial drone platforms can cover the operational conditions that meet both the high precision capabilities of surface rovers and the extensive areas coverage capabilities typical of orbital operations. In almost 60 years of human exploration of Mars, we tested a wide range of technologies on its surface, using platforms as Rovers, probes and orbiters. Mars is the planets with the biggest robot population in the solar system. Right now the most realistic strategy for a sustainable human presence on Mars is through the ISRU (In Situ Resources Utilisation), which use can significantly reduce the need of continuous resupply missions from earth. Until we explored less then the 1% of the Mars surface. We need new platforms to rapidly increase our exploration capabilities if we want to seriously boost the first human missions.