In a violent crater on Mars, days after a tiny helicopter with a smartphone brain attempted another world’s first powered flight. NASA hopes its giant robotic propeller, called the Ingenuity, will demonstrate that powered flight is possible in the very thin Martian air and help usher in a new era of planetary exploration in which drones play an important role.
Creativity has reached Mars like a stowaway, folded on the underside of NASA’s Persevering Rover. It landed on the red planet in February After traveling for seven months, 293 million miles from Earth. For its first flight, the $ 85 million, 4-pound vehicle will hover about 10 feet above the roof and soar – no higher than the edge of the basketball hoop – before returning to the surface. The entire journey must be completed within 90 seconds.
A short voyage – one of five planned one-month journeys expected to start on or around April 11 – is a short jump according to the interplanetary travel metrics. But agency officials say it will be a huge leap to explore Mars. In the future, they say, unmanned drones like the Ingenuity could fly into the sky to explore canyons, ice sheets and other terrain inaccessible to explorers. If human explorers land on Mars, drones can act as reconnaissance and aerial sensors.
“Hopefully, creativity will allow us to expand and open up the mobility of air on Mars,” said Bob Ballaram, chief project engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
A journey of creativity, part of a broader mission to Watch for signs of past life on the red planet, Is the latest in the wave of important Martian moments this year.
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“Hipster-friendly music fans. Analyst. Beer practitioners. A very charming twitter pioneer. Communicator. “
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