NASA to Send Tiny Helicopter to Mars.

NASA is planning
to send a tiny autonomous helicopter to Mars on its next rover mission to the
red planet. The space agency announced Friday that the helicopter will be
carried aboard the Mars 2020 rover as a technology demonstration to test its
ability to serve as a scout and to reach locations not accessible by ground.

The helicopter
is being developed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. The
craft weighs less than 4 pounds (1.8 kilograms), has a fuselage about the size
of a softball and twin, counter-rotating blades that will spin at almost 3,000
rpm — a necessity in the thin Martian atmosphere. Solar cells will charge its
lithium-ion batteries. Flights will be programmed because the distance to Mars
precludes real-time commands from Earth.