Enormous kites flown by robots could help power a Mars colony

By Leah Crane

Any long-term base camp on Mars will need to be powered by renewable energy. A proposal developed in response to a competition run by the European Space Agency suggests using a giant kite flown by robots to harness high Martian wind speeds, which could provide enough energy to sustain several astronauts in their everyday work.

Producing and storing renewable energy on Mars is difficult. It is further from the sun than Earth, so it only gets 43 per cent of the sunlight Earth does, making solar power less effective. …