Brandon Keim
Science

Surfing Space With Smart Dust

The possibility of using ‘smart dust’ — networked, speck-sized sensors that blanket an area and collectively ‘see’ it — for domestic surveillance or in military operations has been considered for a while. There are, however, more enlightening uses for this proposed technology. Smart dust could be packed into the nose cones of planetary probes and […]

Smdust
The possibility of using 'smart dust' -- networked, speck-sized sensors that blanket an area and collectively 'see' it -- for domestic surveillance or in military operations has been considered for a while.

There are, however, more enlightening uses for this proposed technology.

Smart dust could be packed into the nose cones of planetary probes and then released into the atmospheres of planets, where they would be carried on the wind. For a planet like Mars, smart dust particles would each have to be the size of a grain of sand.

By applying a voltage to alter the shape of the polymer sheath surrounding the chip, dust particle could be steered towards a target, even in high winds. [...]

"In our simulations, we have shown that a swarm of 50 dust particles can organise themselves into a star formation, even in turbulent wind."

The ability to fly in formation would allow the processing of data to be spread, or "distributed" between all the chips, and a collective signal to be beamed back to a "mothership".

'Smart Dust' to explore planets [BBC]