China - February 24, 2025 Chinese researchers develop air-ground dual-purpose drone for Mars exploration (Voice_over) It's a drone encased in a rounded lightweight skeleton that can both fly and roll around on the ground, and one day it might help China's Mars exploration missions. The robot drone was designed by a research team at the School of Astronautics at the Harbin Institute of Technology and weighs about 300 grams, roughly the same as an apple. It can shift its center of gravity and uses its rotors to propel it forward. (Sound_bite) Zhu Yimin, Ph.D candidate of School of Astronautics, Harbin Institute of Technology: "On the ground, it mainly rolls by shifting its center of gravity. In the air, it relies on a pair of contra-rotating coaxial rotors, controlled by a steering engine to adjust the forward direction, to control torque and force, ultimately achieving stable flight." (Voice_over) The team is building several versions of the robot drone for potential use by the country's space program for future Mars explorations. But there are other use cases, like monitoring dangerous spaces. (Sound_bite) Zhang Lixian, Professor of School of Astronautics, Harbin Institute of Technology: "In terms of its future prospects, we hope that China can achieve Mars exploration through the air-ground dual-purpose unmanned aerial vehicle so as to have longer endurance and more time for observation. Our second goal is for such machines to be suitable for construction in many underground spaces and for exploring unknown underground spaces. We also need robotic means for inspection and environmental detection. We have now materialized all these functions." (Voice_over) According to a report from the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the value of China's low-altitude economy is expected to exceed 136 billion U.S. dollars by 2026. [Restriction: No access Chinese mainland]