JPL’s Ingenuity helicopter is preparing for the 50th flight of its 5-flight mission to Mars. Flight 49, which took place last weekend, was its fastest and highest yet—the little helicopter flew 282 meters at an altitude of 16 meters, reaching a top speed of 6.50 meters per second. Not a bad performance for a tech […]
Planning for the return journey is an integral part of the preparations for a crewed Mars mission. Astronauts will require a total mass of about 50 tonnes of rocket propellent for the ascent vehicle that will lift them off the planet’s surface, including 31 tonnes of oxygen approximately. The less popular option is for crewed […]
NASA has announced a conceptual mission architecture for the Mars Sample Return (MSR) program, and it’s a pleasant surprise. The goal of the proposed program is to return the rock samples that the Perseverance rover is currently collecting on the Martian surface to Earth, which, as you can imagine, is not a simple process. It’ll […]
The Ingenuity Mars Helicopter is currently preparing for its 12th flight in Jezero Crater on Mars, which is 11 flights more than was strictly necessary for NASA to have declared the technology demonstrator a success. Over the last four months, Ingenuity has proven that flight on Mars is not only possible, but practical, and can […]
We humans like to think big. And so we’re enthralled by the idea of terraforming other planets, notably Mars. We love the idea of remaking a hostile, barren planet into a comfortable, beautiful new world, capable of supporting and sustaining us with plentiful food and other necessities. And if we have to do it by […]
Look, I know that the Perseverance rover has brought some flashy stuff to Mars. It’s got lasers, it’s got a big robot arm, it’s got a little robot arm, and it even launched a helicopter. That’s all great, but tucked up inside of Perseverance is another instrument about the size of a car battery that […]
Earlier today, at about 11am Mars time, the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter successfully completed its very first flight on Mars. The little helicopter, which is about the size of a box of tissues, did exactly what it was supposed to do, ascending vertically to 3 meters, hovering for 30 seconds, pivoting towards the Perseverance rover, and then […]
They used to call it “Seven Minutes of Terror”—a NASA probe would slice into the atmosphere of Mars at more than 20,000 kilometers per hour; slow itself with a heat shield, parachute, and rocket engines; and somehow land intact on the surface, just six or seven minutes later, while its makers waited helplessly on Earth. The computer-animated landing […]
Tucked under the belly of the Perseverance rover that will be landing on Mars in just a few days is a little helicopter called Ingenuity. Its body is the size of a box of tissues, slung underneath a pair of 1.2m carbon fiber rotors on top of four spindly legs. It weighs just 1.8kg, but […]
If you could stand next to NASA’s Perseverance rover on the Martian surface… well, you’d be standing on Mars. Which would be a pretty remarkable thing unto itself. But if you were waiting for the rover to go boldly exploring, your mind might soon wander. You’d be forgiven for thinking this is like watching paint dry. The Curiosity rover, which landed […]