Suara.com – China has ambitions to expand its space exploration capabilities and the country appears to be targeting Mars again to send its next mission in the form of helicopter unmanned.
China’s National Space Science Center (NSSC) is developing a helicopter that bears a striking resemblance to helicopters Ingenuity owned by NASA, which is currently on Mars.
The helicopter had four slender legs outstretched, two rotors stacked on top of each other, and a simplified fuselage. Allegedly this is China’s way of trying to compete with NASA’s successful helicopter on the Red Planet.
Reports from the NSSC indicate that the helicopters called “Mars cruisers” have passed the review and are ready to advance to the next stage of development.
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Reported from Gizmodo on Friday (3/9/2021), the helicopter was intended to patrol the Martian surface landscape and continue China’s exploration of the Red Planet.
To that end, the Mars rover will be equipped with a spectrometer for aerial surveys and planetary geology.
The appearance of this helicopter received criticism, one of which was Andrew Jones from SpaceNews who said that China was cloning NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter.
Even so, China’s achievements in the space field have grown rapidly and are catching up with other major players in space exploration.
China has previously sent rover to the Moon and Mars and the country is currently building its own space station called Tiangong.
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In its ambitious plans, China hopes to send a manned mission to Mars by 2033 and even build an ultra-large spacecraft that stretches for miles.
China is not the only copycat when it comes to space. The Soviets have their own space shuttle and Russia recently revealed a design for a reusable rocket, which looks exactly like SpaceX’s Falcon 9.
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