FLYING DRONE ON MARS

IMAGE CREDIT:NASA

After landing several miniature dune buggies on Mars to cruise around the surface of the planet, NASA has decided it wants a birds-eye view next time. The Mars Helicopter, a tiny remote-control dual-rotor drone, will make the trip to the red planet stowed in the belly pan of the Mars 2020 Rover.

Once on the surface, the six-wheeled rover will deploy the small chopper in a suitable location, allowing it to charge its batteries and run through a variety of pre-flight tests before making history in the thin Martin atmosphere.

With the added dimension of a bird’s-eye view from a ‘marscopter,’ we can only imagine what future missions will achieve.

The spindly Mars Helicopter, which has been in development since 2013, has a box-like fuselage about the size of a softball and weighs approximately four pounds. Solar cells will charge the tiny drone during the day, and an internal heater will help it endure the cold Martian nights. Its counter-rotating blades will spin at almost 3,000 rpm, about 10 times faster than a similar craft here on Earth.

IMAGE CREDIT: NASA

“The atmosphere of Mars is only one percent that of Earth, so when our helicopter is on the Martian surface, it’s already at the Earth equivalent of 100,000 feet up,” said Mimi Aung of JPL. “To make it fly at that low atmospheric density, we had to scrutinize everything, make it as light as possible while being as strong and as powerful as it can possibly be.”

Once the copter is ready to go, a 30-day test flight campaign will commence, beginning with a simple hover in place and leading to more extensive reconnaissance missions lasting as long as 90 seconds. “We don’t have a pilot and Earth will be several light minutes away, so there is no way to joystick this mission in real time,” said Aung. “Instead, we have an autonomous capability that will be able to receive and interpret commands from the ground, and then fly the mission on its own.”

The Mars 2020 mission, scheduled for launch aboard an Atlas V rocket from Cape Canaveral in July 2020, is expected to reach red planet in February 2021. As cool as the mini chopper is, it’s not a crucial component of the mission.