Watch the NASA Ingenuity Helicopter flying over Mars

 

The “Ingenuity” helicopter – which means “the ingenious machine” – looks like a twin-propeller drone, but has been engineered with the high technology to complete its mission of “jumps” at short altitudes on Mars.

The helicopter’s only target – which weighs less than 2kg and does not contain any other tools on board – is to conduct sorties exploring the skies to aid the study of Mars.

And because the nature of the Martian atmosphere is different from that of Earth, the development of the helicopter is an achievement, especially since the helicopter’s test flights will last only about 90 seconds each, and will rise in the atmosphere only 5 meters. Although these figures seem simple on Mars, they are equivalent to flying 30,480 meters on Earth, and the weight of the helicopter there is the same as that of commercial aircraft here.