NASA plans to send a helicopter to Mars in 2020. Mars Mission intended to land on the Red Planet in 2020, the aircraft has just successfully passed a key test. Engineers and scientists from NASA have put together the ‘rover’ that will travel to Mars in the middle of next year.
With a new solar panel installed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in May and some tests on the machine’s rotors, the helicopter approaches its target: flying through the subtle atmosphere of the Red Planet.
On the other hand, Mars does not have a flat surface. This provides not so simple challenges for land-based robots like Curiosity, its predecessors Spirit and Opportunity, and even for the InSight lander. It can happen that on Mars their wheels are damaged or become trapped in the uneven ground. But a helicopter-type drone does not have to deal with the dangerous Martian soil like the other “robotic tenants“.
If it can fly over the skies, it will provide NASA with the opportunity to observe the cliffs up close, to enter caves and to land in hard-to-reach places. At least, this is the prospect for future missions.
The helicopter designed for Mars, the one currently available, will not make any flight on the planet, to tell the truth. Rather it is a prototype, which aims to show that man can drive robots on Mars. If all goes well, it will pave the way for future exploration of the planet by heaven.
The futuristic helicopter, which weighs only 1.8 kilograms, is equipped with a high-resolution camera. The simulations suggest that the aircraft has a fair chance of success – but getting to Mars is incredibly difficult and landing on the planet is even more difficult.
Mars Helicopter conducted the first tests in January 2019, in a simulated Martian environment. He then tested for compatibility with the Mars Helicopter Delivery System at Lockheed Martin Space in Denver.
