This Mars helicopter will image the red planet of the sky

NASA sends a helicopter to Mars with the March 2020 rover, which is due to land on the planet in 2021. The "Copter recently passed a number of key tests, but NASA put the finishing touches to its historic project.

With the installation of a new solar panel at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in May and a few tests of the machine's rotors, the Mars helicopter is getting closer to its goal: Fly in the thin atmosphere of the red planet.

Mars is not flat. This provides unique challenges for ground robots like Curiosity, his predecessors Spirit and Opportunity, and even the lander InSight stationary. Finally, Mars wears them and sometimes they have cracks in their wheels or they are trapped in the ground.

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NASA Mars helicopter passes flight tests

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But a helicopter-type UAV must not face the dangerous Martian ground, unlike the other robotic Martian inhabitants. If it can fly in the air, it gives NASA the opportunity to closely monitor the cliffs, sneak into caves and land in hard-to-reach places. At least, that's the concept for future missions.

The Mars helicopter, shown below, will not do any experiments on Mars this time. It is rather a technological demonstration model to prove that we can fly robots on Mars. If all goes well, it will open the way for future explorations of the planet via the sky.

However, the futuristic helicopter, which weighs only 1.8 kg, is equipped with a high-resolution camera. The camera will present the potential of an aerial examination in the atmosphere of Mars, rather than looking for aliens hiding in dark and invisible areas of Mars.

But with a new solar panel and some additional tests to its credit, is NASA now ready to go to the helicopter? Not enough.

"We hope to complete our latest tests and enhancements and deliver the helicopter to the High Bay 1 Clean Room for integration with the rover this summer," said MiMi Aung, project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "But we will never be done with helicopter tests until we fly to Mars."

The simulations suggest that the helicopter has a good chance of success – but getting to Mars is incredibly difficult, landing on the planet is even harder and taking off again? Restart the difficulty. If NASA makes a flight on a planet more than 200 million kilometers from the Earth, it will be a feat of the same kind as the first flight of the Wright Brothers in 1903.