Local positioning system for Mars

Once mankind will start to explore Mars, they will need to know their position on the planet. Since there will be no GPS at first, they will need to use a different positioning system. We thought of using triangulation to solve this problem. We will use fixed beacons made of Arduino chips with known positions and moveable beacons that will be carried by the crew. By analyzing the power of the signal received by the moveable beacons and their information, the crew can know its position. One advantage of this approach would be the fact that the exploring crew could extend the beacon network with its advance in unknown territory. It could also be used to carry information from the field to the headquarters.

This project would be an improvement of a project started by Crew 103 that failed due to hardware issues. We plan to use their previous experiences and equipment, which will help us to achieve the first results even faster, and give us more time to improve the project.