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The 1st-ever Mars helicopter will start flying next year. Here's how. - Space.com

The 1st-ever Mars helicopter will start flying next year. Here's how. - Space.com

The 1st-ever Mars helicopter will start flying next year. Here's how. - Space.com
Jul 06, 2020 1 min, 8 secs

NASA's Perseverance rover will have a special passenger when it alights inside Mars' Jezero Crater in February 2021 — the first helicopter ever to fly on another world.

(1.8 kilograms) chopper, named Ingenuity, will ride to Mars on Perseverance's belly, squeezing into a spot that offers roughly 24 inches (61 centimeters) of ground clearance, including the helicopter delivery system.

"That is not a lot of room to play with," Chris Salvo, the helicopter interface lead of Mars 2020, the official name of Perseverance's mission, said in a statement. .

Related: NASA's Mars 2020 rover Perseverance in pictures.

During this process, the deployment system will maintain electrical and data connections between Perseverance and Ingenuity until it's time to let the helicopter loose.

The plan is to gently drop Ingenuity to the surface and to have Perseverance drive away, allowing Ingenuity to charge its batteries with a solar panel.

Some possible uses for future Mars choppers include scouting ahead for tricky terrain, studying vertical cliffs and exploring caves or deep craters that a rover may not be able to reach, NASA officials said.

The rover also carries technology demonstrations that could aid future human explorers on the Red Planet, including an instrument designed to make oxygen from the thin, carbon dioxide-dominated Martian atmosphere.

Perseverance will launch to Mars no earlier than July 30 of this year, eventually joining NASA's long-running Curiosity rover on the Red Planet surface.

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