An autonomous rover that hunts for water on Mars — not where it used to be, but where it briefly appears every dawn.
Curiosity and Perseverance study ancient rock for signs of past habitability. AQUILA is built for a different, forward-looking question — where is usable water today, for the missions that come after this one.
In 2024, scientists confirmed frost forming on equatorial volcano calderas — but only for a few hours after sunrise before it evaporates. No mission has been built to specifically watch for this window.
Radar alone can mistake a rock layer for ice. Confirming the 2024 frost discovery took cross-referencing three independent datasets — a process AQUILA runs onboard, in real time.
No single instrument gets to make the call — a candidate site is only logged when all three independently agree.
Underside-mounted array scans continuously while driving, mapping subsurface layers down to several metres.
Fires neutrons into the ground and reads the bounce-back to detect hydrogen — the telltale sign of water ice.
Mast-mounted camera watches caldera terrain at sunrise for the brief water-frost signature — AQUILA's original contribution.
Toggle the states below — this is a real DARPA-developed mechanism, adapted here to solve a documented Mars failure.
Round profile for fast, efficient travel across rocky terrain. This is AQUILA's default driving state.
Triggered by: default stateBased on ESA's Rosalind Franklin rover — closest real analog in power source, drill depth, and instrument mix.
| Mass | ~330 kg |
| Length × Width × Height | 2.2 m × 2.5 m × 2.2 m |
| Power source | Solar array + electrodynamic dust shield |
| Drill depth | 2 m subsurface reach |
| Mobility | 6-wheel rocker-bogie, reconfigurable wheel–track |
| Primary sensors | GPR · Neutron spectrometer · Dawn frost camera |
| Navigation | Stereo navcams, hazcams, IMU, sun sensor |
| Comms | UHF relay via orbiter |
| Launch vehicle | Falcon Heavy |
Power-heavy scans are scheduled specifically around the 07:00 frost window, instead of running on a fixed daily cycle like current missions.
Instead of a binary detected / not-detected flag, AQUILA outputs a confidence-scored water map future colony planners can use directly.
Since frost is only visible at dawn, confirmed sites get a dropped beacon so future missions can return without re-scanning from scratch.
Wheel-slip sensors trigger automatic reconfiguration into track mode — solving the exact failure that stranded NASA's Spirit rover in 2009.