Devices can deliver Martian soil samples to Earth.
NASA plans to launch two more small helicopters to Mars , which will help deliver soil samples of the Red Planet collected by the Perseverance rover to Earth. So far, it is planned that the rover will deliver them to the rocket that will transport the samples to our planet in about 10 years, reports AR.
But if the rover fails, two small aircraft will deliver the samples to the rocket instead. It is planned to build them and launch them on the Red Planet at the end of this decade.
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Small apparatuses will be built in the image of the Ingenuity helicopter, which is successfully operating on Marsi has now made 29 flights on the Red Planet. However, the new models have wheels and special “hands” for grabbing samples.
Each of the helicopters will be designed to carry one sample tube at a time. That is, the aircraft will make several round trips.
Perseverance has now collected 11 samples of Martian rock. The last sample at the moment, a sedimentary rock, is the most promising from the point of view of the search for traces of extraterrestrial life.
Previously, the Perseverance rover, using its robotic arm, took a “selfie” on the Red Planet, on which was also hit by Ingenuity. At the time of the picture, the rover was at a distance of four meters from the helicopter.
