Mars helicopter to fly around red planet on Nasa's next rover mission

'The idea of a helicopter flying the skies of another planet is thrilling,' the Nasa chief says

Nasa is sending a helicopter into space on its next mission to Mars, expected to launch July 2020.

The Mars Helicopter will travel with the Mars 2020 rover mission, the space agency has announced. Scientists want to test how “heavier-than-air vehicles” will operate on the red planet, Nasa said in a release.

“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.” Nasa administrator Jim Bridenstine said about the drone-like machine.

“After the Wright brothers proved 117 years ago that powered, sustained and controlled flight was possible here on Earth, another group of American pioneers may prove the same can be done on another world,” Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator for Nasa’s Science Mission Directorate, said at the agency headquarters in Washington.

The Mars Helicopter will not be manned but operated autonomously similar to how a drone is here on Earth. It has the potential to be much faster – and more complicated to pull off – than travelling the rocky and dirt-covered surface of Mars.

However, unlike a drone “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,” MiMi Aung, project manager at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Lab, said.

Instead, the helicopter will be able to receive a set of commands for flying a mission and carry them out on its own, Ms Aung explained.

One of the main challenges is that helicopters here on Earth have only reached an altitude of 40,000 feet (12,192 metres), but Mars’s atmosphere is 1 per cent that of Earth’s. This means that when the new helicopter is on the surface of the planet, it will already be the equivalent of 100,000 feet up in the Earth’s atmosphere.

“To make it fly at that low atmospheric density, we had to scrutinise everything, make it as light as possible while being as strong and as powerful as it can possibly be,” Ms Aung said.

“Nasa has a proud history of firsts,” Mr Bridenstine said. According to Nasa, “the full 30-day flight test campaign will include up to five flights of incrementally farther flight distances, up to a few hundred metres, and longer durations as long as 90 seconds, over a period. On its first flight, the helicopter will make a short vertical climb to 10 feet (3 metres), where it will hover for about 30 seconds”.