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NASA is sending a helicopter to Mars, but what for?:
NASA's mission to send another rover to Mars is set to culminate in a successful landing on February 18, 2021, but that's not all the agency is sending to the Red Planet.
The Perseverance rover – once it lands next month – will begin scouring a section of Mars that astronomers believe could have hosted and supported microbial life in the past.
But a second passenger aboard the lander vehicle will be meant to do something else entirely.
The Mars Helicopter – also known as Ingenuity – will deploy alongside the rover, and will be NASA's attempt at trying to achieve successful controlled flight on Mars for the very first time.
Ingenuity weighs only four pounds, and is described as a "small, but mighty passenger". Though it has a fuselage (main body) no bigger than a tissue box, it's supposedly strong enough to brave the harsh weather conditions on the planet during flight.
Started as a wishful project about six years ago, the engineers behind Ingenuity understood that while it was theoretically possible to fly in Mars' super-thin atmosphere, there was no real conviction that they'd be able to build a vehicle that could fly, communicate, and survive on its own on Mars.
But after rounds of research and testing, the team have managed to create a flying vehicle that has so far survived all tests emulating Mars' environment, and the next step is to make it fly on the Red Planet for real.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday January 28 2021, @11:58PM (2 children)
Mars, Mars, Mars, Mars.... am I the only one sick of fucking Mars? They go to Mars because it's fucking easy. Well, comparatively easy.
Want to impress me and actually learn some new science? Put a lander on Venus. Sure it won't last long, but you'll learn something new. Better than visiting Mars over and over and over and over.
Hell, put a lander on the backside of Mercury. That'd be something. Better than more Mars. Do these fucks* want to learn new science or just keep their damn jobs? Is it the administration of NASA playing it safe to curry favor with the dumbfuck Congress they have to beg money from?
*admittedly smart fucks
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday January 29 2021, @04:12AM
Mars, Mercury... same shit. Get over it, it's some rocks "IN SPACE". Guess what else is rocks in space? Earth, motherfucker. Get used to living on it.
(Score: 2) by Socrastotle on Friday January 29 2021, @08:14AM
Venera 7 [wikipedia.org]. The Soviets put a lander on Venus in 1970. Venera 14 would even send back sound from the surface of Venus that can you listen to [youtube.com] today. Pretty neat stuff.
The reason Mars is the focus is because Mars will be the first destination for human colonization. And it's happening far sooner than most realize. Collecting as much data as you can before sending large scale machines, and ultimately men, 40 million miles away is a pretty good investment of energy and time.