An aircraft on Mars would be quite an engineering feat. The average atmospheric pressure on the surface of Mars is 600 pascals, which corresponds to an altitude

An aircraft on Mars would be quite an engineering feat. The average atmospheric pressure on the surface of Mars is 600 pascals, which corresponds to an altitude of 35km on Earth. Since that's all carbon dioxide, oxygen-consuming jets aren't usable. The only propulsion options are battery-powered fans/propellers and rockets. And even with huge wings, any aircraft would have to be going at hundreds of meters per second to generate lift. Looking at altitude records[1], I see NASA's Helios UAV got up to 30km. Pressure at that altitude is only twice that of Mars, so a battery-powered Mars aircraft seems barely doable with current technology. Edit: I was curious about higher altitudes on Mars, so I looked that up as well. Pressure at the top of Olympus Mons is only 30 pascals. That corresponds to 60km altitude on Earth. Good luck getting anything to fly up there. It's effectively a low-grade vacuum. 1. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_altitude_record http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flight_altitude_record 2. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Helios http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Helios