After China managed to send a robotic vehicle to Mars a few months ago, the Asian giant wants to continue to excel in this field and will continue to create new vehicles that carry out research work on the red planet. On this occasion, a miniature prototype of a helicopter will be in charge of carrying out future surveillance missions in future missions on Mars. The country plans for the year 2033 to make its first manned mission to this planet.
These types of space missions are very important today for many space companies that have among their plans to send both robotic vehicles and people in the future.
Little by little we will discover more of Mars
The model is very similar to the helicopter that NASA made for the Perseverance mission. It landed on the red planet in February, while the Chinese robot did so in May. At the moment, the United States and China are the only countries in the world that have managed to put robots on the surface of Mars.
This United States helicopter is the Ingenuity and it made its first flight last April, managing to raise just over three meters above the ground. In this way, it became the first successful takeoff of a human-powered aircraft from a place other than Earth.
Although it seems easy to take flight, the Ingenuity has to face the thin atmosphere of the planet, which is 1% denser than that of our planet.
In fact, to compensate for the helicopter’s lack of aerodynamics, NASA engineers equipped the helicopter with larger propellers (reaching 1.20 meters end-to-end) and which rotate at a faster speed than would be needed in the Earth so that an aircraft of its size could take off.
The importance of robots in space missions
Ingenuity has made more than 10 sorties across the red planet since its first lift-off in April, having traveled a distance of just over a kilometer and a half in a time of approximately 20 minutes.
The Chinese space agency has not given much more details at the moment, but this new helicopter could be used for the exploration of Mars as well as for surveillance missions.
Like the Ingenuity, the Chinese robotic helicopter prototype features two rotor propellers , a sensor base, a camera, and four slim legs. However, it will not have a solar panel in its structure to obtain energy from it.