Nasa will send helicopter to Mars to test otherworldly flight

Nasa will send helicopter to Mars to test otherworldly flight

  • May 12, 2018
Table of Contents

Nasa will send helicopter to Mars to test otherworldly flight

The Mars 2020 rover – accompanied by its helicopter companion – is due to launch in July of that year and arrive on the red planet in February 2021. Nasa is sending a helicopter to Mars, in the first test of a heavier-than-air aircraft on another planet. The Mars Helicopter will be bundled with the US space agency’s Mars rover when it launches in 2020.

Its design team spent more than four years shrinking a working helicopter to ‘the size of a softball’ and cutting its weight to 1.8kg (4lbs). It is specifically designed to fly in the atmosphere of Mars, which is 100 times thinner than Earth’s. The helicopter’s two blades will spin at close to 3,000 revolutions a minute, which Nasa says is about 10 times faster than a standard helicopter on Earth.

Source: bbc.com

Tags :
Share :
comments powered by Disqus

Related Posts

NASA’s Launching a Lander That Will Dig on Mars

NASA’s Launching a Lander That Will Dig on Mars

InSight will accomplish this feat with its Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3), nicknamed “the mole” because it can burrow through regolith (the loose rocky surface layer on Mars and many other terrestrial planets). The instrument consists of a tube with a spring-loaded mechanism that will hammer out a hole in half-meter increments. Every 50 centimeters, it will stop for several hours or days to take thermal measurements and cool down from the frictional and operational heat generated by the dig process.

Read More
NASA advisers say SpaceX rocket technology could put lives at risk

NASA advisers say SpaceX rocket technology could put lives at risk

Read More
NASA completes full-power tests of small, portable nuclear reactor

NASA completes full-power tests of small, portable nuclear reactor

Being able to generate power will be essential for long-term space travel. Powering a stay on Mars, for example, will require a lot of fuel, way more than we can pack onto a rocket. That’s why NASA, Los Alamos National Laboratory, the Department of Energy and a number of other groups have been working on a small, transportable nuclear reactor that can reliably generate power on the go.

Read More