INSUBCONTINENT EXCLUSIVE:
In five decades of exploring Mars, NASA
has sent orbiters, landers and rovers to explore Earth's neighbor
But the space agency's next mission will be the first to send a tiny robotic helicopter to another planet.The Mars Helicopter, an autonomous
spacecraft with a meter-long rotor and a body the size of a chihuahua, will fly in the underbelly of the Mars 2020 rover when it launches in
two years, NASA announced Friday
The project will serve mainly as a test of the technology needed to fly a rotorcraft above a world 140 million miles away.It took four years
of testing and redesign to create a helicopter capable of operating on the Red Planet
Mars's atmosphere is so thin that hovering just 10 feet above the surface is the equivalent of soaring 100,000 feet above Earth.The altitude
record for helicopters on Earth is 40,000 feet; above that, the air isn't dense enough to hold copters aloft."To make it fly at that low
atmospheric density, we had to scrutinize everything, make it as light as possible while being as strong and as powerful as it can possibly
be," Mimi Aung, the Mars Helicopter project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said in a news release.The helicopter is equipped
with solar cells to charge its lithium batteries and an internal heating mechanism to keep it warm through the Martian night, when
temperatures can plummet to minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit.It takes from about four minutes to almost as much as a half-hour for light to
travel from Mars to Earth, depending on where the planets are in their orbits
That delay rules out the possibility of remotely operating the helicopter
Instead, the spacecraft must be able to receive commands from operators on Earth, then execute them on its own.The Mars 2020 spacecraft is
slated to touch down on the Martian surface in February 2021
The car-size rover is equipped with a drill for collecting rock samples, instruments for conducting chemical analyses and seeking
potentially habitable environments, an experiment to test the viability of producing oxygen from the planet's carbon dioxide-rich
atmosphere, and an array of sensors.After landing, the rover will deposit its helicopter payload, then retreat to a safe distance while the
rotorcraft take off.The helicopter's first flight should be a short one: It will climb 10 feet and hover for 30 seconds before returning to
If all goes according to plan, the craft will make four more flights over the course of a 30-day test campaign, each progressively longer
and more complex than the first.If the Mars Helicopter fails, the overall Mars 2020 mission will not be harmed
But the potential upsides for NASA are thrilling; a successful mission could pave the way for future rotorcraft to act as scouts and explore
parts of Mars that rovers can't reach.(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by TheIndianSubcontinent staff and is
published from a syndicated feed.)For the latest Election Results Live Updates from Karnataka log on to TheIndianSubcontinent.com
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