BULLETIN
Perseverance tests technology on Mars for future missions
A historic helicopter flight and successful oxygen extraction lead the way
It’s been a busy April for NASA’s Perseverance rover, as it spent the month trialling two pioneering technology demonstrations – a drone-like helicopter and a device to extract oxygen from the atmosphere. Both experiments could be used on future robotic and human missions to the Red Planet.
On 19 April, the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter – a 1.8kg rotocopter – made history with the first powered flight from the surface of another planet. This initial flight saw Ingenuity rise up to a height of 3m, hover for 30 seconds and then land.
The 20cm-long robot chopper performed a total of five fights of increasing complexity. As of writing, the third of these fights saw the spacecraft travel laterally for 50m before returning to its starting point.
“What the Ingenuity team has done is given us the third dimension,” says Michael Watkins, director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “They’ve freed us from the surface now, forever,
