2 Ingenuity-class helicopters to join Mars sample return efforts
The campaign to bring genuine Mars samples to Earth will now include two mini-helicopters. NASA officials involved with the Mars sample return (MSR) effort announced today (July 27) that they plan to redesign the mission, abandoning an earlier draft that required the European Space Agency (ESA) “fetch rover” to land on the mission. own lander. NASA’s Perseverance rover, which is expected to remain active when NASA’s MSR lander lands in 2031, will now be tasked with carrying collected and stored samples onto a Mars climbing vehicle. If that fails, however, two helicopters like the Ingenuity, which landed with Perseverance last year, would be a backup option for retrieving the cache itself. The helicopter will be similar to the Ingenuity in terms of size and mass, but with two key differences, NASA MSR program manager Richard Cook told reporters at a briefing today. “There will be a landing leg that includes, underneath, the mobility wheel,” Cook explained, saying this new capability w