By now most people know about the Ingenuity helicopter which has been flying around Mars for over two years now. What people are less familiar with is NASA’s plan and current development of two new more advanced helicopters preparing for a different mission to Mars in the coming years. While Ingenuity was primarily a technology demonstration and has been fortunate enough to help scout for the Perseverance Rover, these new helicopters will have a dedicated mission.
Equipped with wheels, robotic arms, and a few other upgrades, the two helicopters will be tasked with flying around the red planet and picking up sample tubes placed by Perseverance. Specifically, they are part of the Mars Sample Return mission where NASA along with the ESA plan to get Mars samples back to Earth. In this case, if Perseverance was unable to transport the samples to the lander for whatever reason, the helicopters would deploy and gather any available samples.
This is a significantly more advanced process than the current Ingenuity helicopter operations and would be an impressive feat. While plans could still change before this mission occurs, these new mission-specific helicopters are still making progress. Here I will go more in-depth into the upgraded Mars helicopters, the help from Ingenuity, what to expect in the next few years, and more.
Full article here – https://thespacebucket.com/the-new-helicopters-nasa-is-sending-to-mars/
For more space-related content check out – https://thespacebucket.com/
Credit:
NASA – https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCLA_DiR1FfKNvjuUpBHmylQ
Chapters:
0:00 – Intro
1:05 – Two New Helicopters
4:23 – New Helicopter Testing
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Love your videos. Are you a Martian?
Thanks man! 😎
Venus ballon’s technic I guess not possible
lol
Nice video!
A.I. + Drone + Mars = ?
Good job. Thats great you showed true color images of Mars. Nice report. Thanks!
I feel like the guys at JPL make up expected performances just to blow away everyone. Go NASA
We need a dedicated Moon base to handle retrieved samples.
Brilliant engineers who created Ingenuity helicopter.
If that septa copter doesn't work can I use it as a ceiling fan in my laboratory?
I dont think they should bring anything back. everything should be one way till at least several years of Mars human occupation.
Will they have the new toroidal propeller blades?
Now so much of experiment conducted in mars, time to send people. Probably time to send settlement inflated tents
You have nice fresh information most time i visit your channel. I like that you cover new topics that cannot be found easily on the internet. Your voice is stable and well to understand. Please keep it up like this, its good.
We live in exciting times.
We will have to wait and see how it progresses and the impact it has on the space industry. Thanks very much for watching
how much are these costing? id rather see a lunar telescope built after the Artims flights than anything else to mars. Space X will beat NASA to mars by a decade. FAT ass NASA loves wasting money
at this point just send a iPhone to Mars or to the Moon What a joke NASA pick a lane Your the jack of all trades and master of none Build a telescope on the moon redirect asteroids or Hell send a iPhone battery pack and solar panel at leased we'd have a zoom lens on the surface of the moon… This is off shelf tech people the military said they have an extra Hubble laying around where is that at?
Holicopers teams proving the american technology of future.inguinity is one of the incredible invention of this century.
one thing I don't get is NASA knows theres a guy out there who wants and IS going to Mars. So instead of putting all this money into new missions with landers containing return rockets for samples just have the guy who wants to go to Mars pick them up?
OK, I get they want to bring rocks back from Mars. Great idea. And they have a craft packaging those rocks for return to Earth. Again GREAT
But I don’t get why the current rover is leaving the samples around Mars like little turds for later pickup. Why not just keep them in the River? Don’t get the reason.
The new Mars Heli Drone is a very good idea! Especially because I worry, that the NASA+ESA collaboration will run into delays. it could happen, that an interim Mars dust storm could bury the dispersed samples under dunes and they could not be found again. A helicopter mission launched as soon as possible could help. Bringing all samples to a central, well-known place would add a layer of security and allow for more time. Besides that, it takes (the economically struggling EU) a lot of effort to go to mars, while a couple or maybe only a few years later SpaceX will have much more capability to go to mars. The LOX+LCH4 technology of Elon Musk's rockets is better adapted to Mars' environment. SpaceX's return rocket could easily get equipped to produce the CH4 fuel, and possibly the oxidizer from Mars's CO2. Quite an advancement to what ESA is capable of!
For ESA, another cooperation would make much more sense, economically, while not hindering their own ambitions, concerning autarch access to orbit! If ESA would provide its launch infrastructure and services ( LNG, LOX, and even LH2 ) to SpaceX's Falcon Heavy. ESA could buy 3 or 6 drone ships to enable frequent reprocessing and equatorial launches for Falcon Heavys in reusable configuration. And it would be easy for Arianespace to adapt or build a high specific impulse 2nd and 3rd stage ( LH2 ) perfectly fitting to the Falcon Heavy's 1st. Even when Starship comes online, there remains a niche for advanced Falcon Heavys.
This cooperation has quite a symbiotic effect for SpaceX, too, as they have no LH2-rocket technology readily available. For Arianespace, it would take off time schedule pressure and technology risk.
It's a drone – plain and simple – NOT a helicopter.
We all wonder when NASA will fix the long outstanding problem with Mars dust depositing on solar cells and making them unusable. It seems that many systems on Earth have similar problems in severe environments such as oil wells and chemical catalytic's. Possibly, the lens of the solar cells themselves need redesign.