A new mission has been devised for a large Martian helicopter: it will search for water and life in the planet’s canyons

The small Mars drone Ingenuity has proven that flying machines have good prospects for aerial reconnaissance on Mars. This has inspired NASA to create a larger helicopter for much larger aerial missions. Engineers are already working on the helicopter project, with the working name Mars Chopper, and scientists are selecting the most interesting objects on Mars to study.

Image source: NASA

The future Mars Chopper helicopter will be quite large — its weight will be 40 kg, of which 5 kg will be the payload. The daily flight of the device will reach 3 km. Unlike Ingenuity, Mars Chopper will not be tied to the rover for communication with Earth. It is assumed that communication with it will be carried out directly, probably through an orbital station in Mars orbit. Such independence will allow the helicopter to make long flights without the risk of losing contact.

At the Lunar and Planetary Science Conference in the United States in March, a group of NASA scientists proposed a Nighthawk mission for Mars Chopper. The helicopter is supposed to fly over the canyons and lava fields of the Eastern Noctis Labyrinthus region. This region is believed to be formed by the remains of a once giant ancient volcano. The zone may be rich in water ice and contain biomarkers. In the future, this area is considered a potential landing site for a manned mission, so promising is it for scientific research.

For reconnaissance purposes in the Noctis Labyrinthus region, the helicopter as part of the Nighthawk mission must receive three scientific instruments with a total mass of 3 kg out of the allowed 5. The reduced payload will allow the device to fly further and higher – for example, to rise to an altitude of up to 1,500 m above the average level on Mars. Recall that the planet’s atmosphere is extremely rarefied, and it is difficult for rotorcraft to fly in it. For example, Ingenuity rose no higher than 20 m from the bottom of the Jezero crater, which is located approximately 2,600 m below the average level. Thus, it used denser layers of the atmosphere, which Mars Chopper will be deprived of.

The proposed payload for the Nighthawk mission would include an omnidirectional color camera (OCCAM), an eight-channel color camera for navigation and geological imaging, a NIRAC spectrometer, a context camera for general object assessment, and a PMWS (Puli Mars Water Snooper), a neutron detector for assessing the water content in the upper layers of the soil.

«”The Nighthawk science mission could not be accomplished with an Ingenuity-class helicopter, but could be accomplished with NASA’s larger, more powerful Mars Chopper helicopter, which is currently under development,” the scientists explain. “The expected range, altitude, and payload of Mars Chopper will allow Nighthawk to perform a wide range of science missions.”

There is currently no exact date for when the Mars Chopper project will move into the selection phase, but the capabilities offered by Nighthawk look very promising.