China has revealed plans for what it is calling a " Mars sail drone " , and it looks very familiar to another flying vehicle we all get laid and love traverse the skies of the Red Planet right on now . But you know what , the more the festive , we say . Mars has plenty of arcanum to give up and it ’s an ideal testing ground for pushing what humanity is open of in space geographic expedition .
China ’s National Space Science Center ( NNSC ) has shown off aprototype Mars helicopterthat it says will be fitted with a micro mass spectrometer for the nation ’s " subsequent Mars exploration . " The radio-controlled aircraft passed a final acceptance undertaking review on August 20 .
There ’s no hiding it , it bet very similar to NASA’sground - breakingandtruly historicplucky little helicopter - that - could , Ingenuity . It even has Ingenuity ’s duple distich of blade , which , to be fair , piddle sense considering the need for them . With so few corpuscle to push against in the thin Martian atmosphere , the chopper ’s two sets of sword need to spin in the opposite commission at around eight times immobile than a even helicopter on Earth to get some lift . That ’s around 2,400 rev ( revolutions per minute ) .
When NASA scientists first sent Ingenuity off to another world with their latest Mars rover , they did n’t love for sure that the whirlybird would get off the background , rent alone smash its own goals ( recently completing its twelfth flying ) to go on and become afully - fledge fellow member of Team Sciencealongside Perseverance . So , for China , it make sense to watch your peer and build on their knowledge . However , China has been count an eye in the sky on Mars for a while , as blank journalist Andrew Jones who broke the storypointed out on Twitter .
An aerostat was regard for Tianwen-1 , China ’s first Mars missionary work , which successfully delivered itsZhurong roverto Mars , becoming thesecond nation everto successfully land a working rover on the Red Planet . An aerostat is a type of uncrewed dirigible , or Colonel Blimp , and the plan — had it been chosen — would have seen it tethered to the ground but flying between 1 and 5 kilometers ( 0.6 and 3.1 mile ) in the aura for a hebdomad . The Chinese Academy of Space Technology was also take balloon and UAVs , according to Jones .
While China catches up and hopefully develops new technologies and bound to campaign while doing so , NASA has already revealed plan for its next luxuriously - flying explorer . Dragonfly , a larger and more advanced rotorcraft , is place to explore the sky of Saturn ’s largest moon Titan , launching in 2027 and arriving in 2034 .
China ’s next mission to Mars is scheduled as asample return commission , and will most probably take place in the 2028 or 2030 launching window . Whether it will include the sail drone , we ’ll have to hold off and see .
