The challenges faced to operate a UAS on Mars can be broken down into 3 areas of delivering the UAS to Mars, operating in the Martian atmosphere, and supporting the UAS. Each area will have unique requirements which can vary based on several factors. For example is the UAS being delivered as a stand alone platform or is it to be operated from a manned based with support? This discussion will focus on a stand alone platform and assume there will be no manned support. Also the mission will remain generic, but we will assume our UAS will carry some kind of sensor payload to perform a mission.
Delivering the UAS to Mars will require a craft to bring it into the Martian atmosphere and then deploy the UAS into the air or launch it from the ground. This can be done as a standalone deployment or as a piggy back on another mission such as a rover. NASA is designing and testing the Prandtl-m UAS for a flight on Mars which would be deployed at altitude from an aeroshell of a future Mars rover (Levine, 2015). The other option would be to have an aeroshell deliver the UAS to the surface similar to a rover where it would then be launched.
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On Mars the general theme is the environmental parameters such as gravity, atmospheric pressure, and temperature are lower and specifically the atmospheric density at sea level is approximately one one-hundredth of that on Earth. (Dhanji, Dupuis, & Nahon, 2006). The result is less lift is generated and therefore the UAS must have larger surfaces or higher thrust than it have on Earth. The temperature on Mars is also considerably lower than that on Earth and will have a possible degrading effect on components such as sensors and batteries. Finally, the gravity is lower on Mars, which will mean payload and aircraft weight will differ from that on Earth (Levine,