Matthias Estermann's Colleagues at Team Tumbleweed
Matthias Estermann's Contact Details
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Team Tumbleweed
Matthias Estermann's Company Details
We are the next generation of engineers and scientists, building the next-generation Mars rover. Currently, Mars exploration is expensive, slow, and encompasses a high risk of failure. This greatly slows down exploration efforts and results in a highly constrained capacity for transporting payloads to Mars. The solution is a new approach in form of a rover that is fast, modular, mass-producible, and that drives down cost by using more off-the-shelf components. Our Tumbleweeds address exactly these needs. The spherical rovers have a diameter of 5 m on Mars and are dropped in swarms over the Martian poles. The up to 360 km/h strong winds propel them randomly towards the equator, while they collect valuable data on-the-roll. The Tumbleweeds can be configured individually for each mission and provide a fast method to survey the Martian surface on a large scale. The gathered data can be used to create maps, select interesting research targets for follow-up missions, find useful resources, scout optimal landing spots, conduct scientific research, and more.