Nasa’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter was a truly groundbreaking device, achieving the remarkable feat of being the first human-made object to fly on another planet back in 2021. Despite crashing in January this year, it successfully completed 72 flights in less than three years. Now that it’s been retired, NASA is setting its sights on developing the next mission that will allow us to explore another planet.
Designer: NASA
Recently, they’ve revealed the early design sketches for the Mars Chopper, which is set to be the successor to the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter. This new version is a significant evolution, being the size of an SUV and featuring six rotor blades designed for flying across the Martian surface. It’s expected to carry around 11 pounds of scientific instruments over a distance of 1.9 miles during a Martian day.
The first sketches depict a three-legged drone gliding over a simulated Martian landscape. Given that the Ingenuity was considerably smaller, this upcoming chopper will hopefully exceed those accomplishments and provide us with an even clearer perspective of Mars. Its functionality may assist scientists in better analyzing the Martian terrain, and do it more quickly.
While it’s still in the “early conceptual and design stages”, there’s already excitement about how this Chopper could help us view areas that were previously unreachable. However, it remains uncertain of whether it will be sent to Mars at all.