NASA/JPL: Mars Helicopter to Fly on Mars 2020
Posted: Sat May 12, 2018 1:20 pm
Mars Helicopter to Fly on NASA's Next Red Planet Rover Mission
NASA | JPL-Caltech | Mars 2020 | 2018 May 11
NASA | JPL-Caltech | Mars 2020 | 2018 May 11
NASA is sending a helicopter to Mars.
The Mars Helicopter, a small, autonomous rotorcraft, will travel with the agency’s Mars 2020 rover mission, currently scheduled to launch in July 2020, to demonstrate the viability and potential of heavier-than-air vehicles on the Red Planet. ...Click to play embedded YouTube video.
Started in August 2013 as a technology development project at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the Mars Helicopter had to prove that big things could come in small packages. The result of the team's four years of design, testing and redesign weighs in at little under four pounds (1.8 kilograms). Its fuselage is about the size of a softball, and its twin, counter-rotating blades will bite into the thin Martian atmosphere at almost 3,000 rpm -- about 10 times the rate of a helicopter on Earth. ...
The helicopter also contains built-in capabilities needed for operation at Mars, including solar cells to charge its lithium-ion batteries, and a heating mechanism to keep it warm through the cold Martian nights. But before the helicopter can fly at Mars it has to get there. It will do so attached to the belly pan of the Mars 2020 rover. ...