OUT OF
THIS WORLD
ENGINEERING
Scheduled for launch in 2020, the Mars Helicopter
- a small, autonomous rotorcraft - will travel with the
agency’s Mars 2020 rover mission to demonstrate
the viability and potential of heavier-than-air vehicles
on the Red Planet.
“NASA has a proud history of firsts,” says NASA.
“The idea of a helicopter flying the skies of another
planet is thrilling. The Mars Helicopter holds much
promise for our future science, discovery, and exploration
missions to Mars.”
It will be a historic first to fly the heavier-than-air
craft on another world.
Started in August 2013 as a technology development
project at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory
(JPL), 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 just under four 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.
See the video at https://youtu.be/oOMQOqKRWjU
/oOMQOqKRWjU