In a hardscrabble crater on Mars, a tiny helicopter with a smartphone brain is now days away from trying the first powered flight to another world. NASA hopes that its spindly robotic helicopter, named ingenuity, will prove that thin flight is possible in dangerously thin Martian air and help us …
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Decades after NASA sent the world’s first mission, rovers and orbiters studying Mars have been tasked with answering constant questions about the red planet. Why it’s important: A new spacecraft recently sent to Mars will help NASA and other space agencies fill the space of knowledge, moving them closer to …
Read More »Helicopter mock-up in flight over Jezero Crater on Mars.Example: NASA / JPL-Caltech So far, human exploration on Mars has been measured in the circular motion of the Earth’s orbits above and in the rover’s mending trails on the ground below. Early next month, with the unveiling of NASA’s two-X-shaped helicopter …
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The Perseverance Mars rover is traveling through its initial checkout and activation, retrieving some 7,000 photos to date, releasing its seven-foot-long robot arm and taking a short test drive after a post-landing software upgrade, engineers said Friday. Robert Hogg, deputy mission manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, …
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