Ingenuity: A Mini-Helicopter Now on Mars
What if you could fly around Mars?
NASA may have achieved that capability last month with the
landing of Perseverance, a rover which included a small flight-worthy companion called
Ingenuity, nicknamed Ginny.
Even though Ginny is small -- a
toaster-sized helicopter with four long legs and two even-longer
(1.2-meter) rotors, she is the first of
her kind --
there has never been anything like her before.
After being deployed, possibly in April, the
car-sized Perseverance ("Percy")
will back away to give Ginny ample room to attempt her
unprecedented first flight.
In the
featured artistic illustration, Ginny's long rotors are depicted
giving her the
lift
she needs to fly into the
thin Martian atmosphere and explore the area near Perseverance.
Although Ingenuity herself will not fly very far,
she is a prototype for all future airborne Solar-System robots that may fly far across not only
Mars, but
Titan.