August 7, 2020

The Mars Helicopter!

Here's another exciting element of the Perseverance Mars rover--the Mars helicopter, named Ingenuity. That's right, there will be a real drone-sized helicopter onboard the rover. It's an experiment for larger ones on future missions, so it will do short flights for as long as it lasts, perhaps just one flight, perhaps several.

It can scout ahead for the rover's travels, take photos of the rover for troubleshooting, create wonderful panoramas, and swoop down to photograph interesting features.

Because the atmosphere on Mars is about 1/100th of Earth's atmosphere, the blades will spin incredibly fast.

Expect more helicopters on future Mars landers.

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