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What's the point of flying a helicopter on Mars? What scientifically relevant data do you get? Its fun and cool but why?
by inetstarrrrrr 6y ago
What's the point of flying a helicopter on Mars? What scientifically relevant data do you get? Its fun and cool but why?
- hoseja 6y agoWell, you may be able to get places a rover can't. But as they say in the article, this is just a demonstrator to show if they can fly on Mars at all.
- shatnersbassoon 6y agoI would have thought atmospheric data that you can't get elsewhere - you'd be able to learn things about pressure and wind at altitudes that rovers can't get to.
- inetstarrrrrr 6y agoI don't think it will fly that high to make a measurably difference to ground level. It only flies for 90 seconds. How high can you get in that time?
- aero-glide2 6y agoThis is a tech demo. This will help design future Martian drones.
- simonh 6y ago* Scouting possible destinations or routes for the rover. * Imaging areas from above with higher fidelity than possible from orbit, and from angles not possible from a rover. * Retrieving samples from areas inaccessible for a rover.
- BelenusMordred 6y agoIt's just a demonstrator but can travel 100m in each 90 second flight. For comparison, the Curiosity rover has travelled 23 km over 8 years.
- virtue3 6y agomain thing I've seen on mark rober's youtube is that it allows you to really scout out locations with a speed unheard of for rovers. Also, you can't really(easily) get a helicoper stuck on rocks :)
- Daniel_sk 6y agoTo test the technology for next missions. This is just a proof of concept.
- arethuza 6y agoPerhaps we could eventually get things like a video of a drone flying over the 4km high cliffs of Echus Chasma: https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080723.html https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080723.html There is a whole new world out there!
- pengaru 6y agoI find it hard to believe you genuinely asked yourself this question and came up empty before posting this vacuous comment.
- fudged71 6y agoThe article covers this. In the future maybe they can fly with LiDAR to get more accurate surface details for the rovers to navigate with, and finding interesting features
- holoduke 6y agoBecause exploring is our nature. And because it will be the first test or flying something in an alien atmosphere. Tons of data alone from the first 5 seconds is very interesting. It's the first step to commercial airliners on Mars :)