Flying a helicopter around Mars poses different challenges than flying one around earth. “The altitude record for a helicopter flying here on earth is about 40,000 feet. The atmosphere of Mars is only one percent that of Earth, so when our helicopter is on the Martian surface, its already at the Earth equivalent of 100,000 feet up,” said Mimi Aung, Mars Helicopter project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in a statement. “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.”

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Mars Helicopter weighs just under four pounds (1.8 kilograms), and its fuselage is about the size of a softball. It is equipped with solar cells to charge its lithium-ion batteries and a heating mechanism to keep it warm during the cold Martian nights. Its twin, counter-rotating blades will bite into the thin Martian atmosphere at almost 3000 rpm—about ten times the rate of a helicopter on Earth.

 

How will it know where to fly? The rover will relay commands to the helicopter that it receives from earth. Communication from earth is several light minutes away, “so there is no way to joystick this mission in real time,” said Aung. Instead we have an autonomous capability that will be able to receive and interpret commands from the ground, and then fly the mission on its own.”

 

Mars 2020 rover and Mars Helicopter are expected to reach Mars in February 2021. Once there, the rover will deploy the helicopter down from its belly onto the ground in a suitable location. Then it will drive a safe distance away and begin to relay commands.

 

After its batteries are charged and a series of tests are performed, controllers on Earth will command Mars Helicopter to take its first flight. On its first flight, the helicopter will make a short vertical climb to ten feet (three meters), where it will hover for about thirty seconds. The full thirty-day test campaign will include up to five flights of incrementally farther flight distances, up to a few hundred meters, and longer durations as long as ninety seconds, over a period.

 

“The ability to see clearly what lies beyond the next hill is crucial for future explorers, said Thomas Zurbuchen, Associate Administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate at the agency headquarters in Washington. “We already have great views of Mars from the surface as well as from orbit. With the add dimension of a bird’s eye view from a ‘marscopter,’ we can only imagine what future missions will achieve.”

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