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NASA's next big Mars rover will include a helicopter designed to work in Mars's thin atmosphere:
When NASA launches its next rover to Mars, the vehicle will have a small helicopter along for the ride. NASA announced today that it will be sending a small autonomous flying chopper — aptly named the Mars Helicopter — with the upcoming Mars 2020 rover. The helicopter will attempt to fly through the Martian air to see if vehicles can even levitate on Mars, where the atmosphere is 100 times thinner than that of Earth.
The design for the Mars Helicopter has been in the works for the last four years at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, but the space agency had yet to decide if it was actually going to send the vehicle to Mars. NASA needed to determine if this technology was actually feasible and if the agency had enough money in its budget to include the copter, according to Spaceflight Now. Now it seems that the agency has decided that this copter idea could actually work.
One much better place in the solar system for a flying vehicle is Titan, which has lower surface gravity and a denser atmosphere than Earth.
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(Score: 2) by frojack on Sunday May 13 2018, @07:16PM (3 children)
They barely have the power budget to run the rover, wasting more power on a helicopter seems like just showing off.
It won't be able carry much payload beyond a very small camera.
Its charging is via solar power. From its fixed base.
Its not designed to even get out of sight, so by definition, its not needed.
It's designed at best to get 10 meters high.
.
Some will say, "Well you have to start somewhere". But this will never be useful technology on that planet. The Martian surface, is already at the Earth equivalent of 100,000 feet up. We can't even fly earth helicopters at that height with all the power at our disposal. Its a fundamentally flawed lift technology for mars.
The good news is it will probably be lost very early in the mission, and they can get back to the science they went there for.
No, you are mistaken. I've always had this sig.
(Score: 1, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday May 13 2018, @07:37PM
> But this will never be useful technology on that planet. The Martian surface, is already at the Earth equivalent of 100,000 feet up. We can't even fly earth helicopters at that height with all the power at our disposal. Its a fundamentally flawed lift technology for mars.
Mars also has the *advantage* of lower gravity. I haven't done the calculations so I don't know how much this offsets the loss in lift from the thin atmosphere, but it's not as simple as you say. Presumably, the scientists at the National *Aeronautics* and Space Administration did those calculations, and figured it should work.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Sunday May 13 2018, @09:27PM (1 child)
Like Captain Kirk before you, you've failed to realise the gravity of the situation.
Where's the logic in that? "A few hundred meters" may not be "out of sight," but you can certainly study things that are a few hundred meters away a lot better if you go over to them.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday May 14 2018, @07:00AM
William Shatner is never wrong and never fails
-- William Shatner
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford