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NASA Considers Autonomous Martian Helicopter To Augment Future Rovers
SternisheFan (2529412) writes with this story at the Verge about an approach being considered by NASA to overcome some of the difficulties in moving a wheeled or multi-legged ground vehicle around the surface of Mars, which has proven to be a difficult task. Rover teams still have a tough time with the Martian surface even though they're flush with terrestrial data. The alien surface is uneven, and ridges and valleys make navigating the terrain difficult. The newest solution proposed by JPL is the Mars Helicopter, an autonomous drone that could 'triple the distances that Mars rovers can drive in a Martian day,' according to NASA. The helicopter would fly ahead of a rover when its view is blocked and send Earth-bound engineers the right data to plan the rover's route.
Atmospheric pressure on Mars is 1% that of Earth. How're you going to get any lift?
Gee I dunno .. why not watch TFV and see what the experts say. You know .. the video where they talk about needed to spin the blades at 2400 rpm, and shows the drone mockups being tested in a chamber that they pump down to Mars conditions.
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Atmospheric pressure on Mars is 1% that of Earth. How're you going to get any lift?
if you rotate the blades 10x as fast as you do on Earth, you'll get the same lift.
That said, gravity on Mars is 1/3rd as much as Earth, so you only need 1/3rd the lift. So rotating the blades at 6x the rate you'd rotate them on Earth would be sufficient.
Or you could go with much larger blades.
Either way ... it's doable. It would require more power than it would on Earth, but it's certainly doable.
This is a pretty interesting discussion of how we'd fly on Mars, done in the context of the X-Plane simulator. It's written with fixed wing planes in mind rather than helicopters, but most of it still applies.