Today several space agencies are living a kind of race to see which is the first capable of taking a human being to Mars. Before this happens, there are many technologies that have to be tested and studies that must be written to verify that a mission of this type can truly be viable. Within the project March 2020 where NASA wants to deploy a new exploration mission we find that the possibility of incorporating a kind of autonomous helicopter.
However, creating a drone with these characteristics represents a series of challenges that engineers and scientists alike must face since, among other things, the planet's atmosphere is totally different, in terms of density, to that of the Earth, so an aircraft, for example, with a fixed wing would need a huge wingspan to compensate for the flight, so any setback could mean a resounding failure in the project due to, among other things , because its repair can be literally impossible.
With all this in mind, NASA has put the engineers of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in a project that seeks to create a helicopter-shaped drone. Among the most interesting characteristics to highlight, for example, a weight that would be around the kilogram, propellers with a wingspan of approximately one meter length, a system by which your batteries should be charged by solar energy (enough to offer a flight autonomy of about three minutes) ...
The true objective of an aircraft of this type is to be able to carry out field reconnaissance work so that the best travel routes can be identified so that the land vehicle can move without so many difficulties. Without a doubt, we live years of technological discoveries that will be remembered in the not too distant future.