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Monday, May 14, 2018

NASA is plans to send a mini helicopter to Mars


The American space agency said, a plans for the first time in the world to send to Mars in 2020 a mini helicopter - a miniature unmanned vehicle, which is designed to significantly deepen our understanding of the Red Planet. 
The Mars Helicopter, this device weights less than 1.8 kilograms, and its fuselage is about the size of a standard grapefruit.

This helicopter will be based on the bottom of the new Martian rover Mars 2020, the wheeled all-terrain vehicle, whose main goals are to determine the potential fitness for Martian life, search for traces of extraterrestrial life, and assess the availability of natural resources and threats to future researchers of the Red Planet.

It is planned that the mission of Mars 2020 will be sent to the Red Planet in 2020, and will arrive in February 2021. In order to fly in a thin Martian atmosphere, the helicopter should be very light and powerful. NASA engineers propose to equip the helicopter with a pair of coaxial screws, the rotation speed of which will be almost 3000 rpm - about 10 times higher than the helicopter propeller speed flying in the atmosphere of our planet.

This helicopter will be prepared with solar panels, through which it can recharge your lithium-ion batteries.The helicopter will be controlled by operators from the Earth. It is planned to perform test flights of this apparatus within 30 days, each subsequent of the five flights scheduled for this period will last longer than the previous one. Thus, it is planned to reach the last test flight of a helicopter moving without recharging for a distance of approximately 100 meters.

According to NASA, this helicopter will become an easy calculation to the cross-country mission Mars 2020 - if the helicopter tests are successful, NASA will acquire a valuable tool for inspection and management of the rover, and in case of unsuccessful tests the loss of the helicopter will not affect the scientific performance of the main mission.

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