NASA(美国航空航天局) has plenty of experience in operating wheeled rovers(探测车) on Mars, but it's never tried to fly a helicopter on the red planet before. The helicopter, Ingenuity,will get a chance to make history in April by flying the Martian skies, but first it needs to be deli...
“Landing on Mars is all about finding a way to stop, and stopping in the right place,” he had said. The first step is the extreme sport of using the atmosphere to slow spacecraft down. Then, 7 miles above the Red Planet, new technology called a “range trigger” would deploy a ...
NASA’s Perseverance rover took this image of the Martian rock nicknamed “Rochette” on August 27, 2021, shortly after it abraded a circular patch known as “Bellegarde.” Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech During the solar conjunction period, the project’s science and engineering teams have had time...
NASA’s Curiosity Mars rover captured these “sun rays” shining through clouds at sunset on February 2, 2023, the 3,730th Martian day, or sol, of the mission. It was the first time that sun rays, also known as crepuscular rays, have been viewed so clearly on Mars. Credit: NASA/JPL...
If Ingenuity succeeds, helicopters could soon become an important part of the Mars-exploration toolkit. "We could put sensors on them and use them as science platforms, and also as scouts," Jurczyk said. Aerial reconnaissance by rotorcraft could allow rovers to "drive more autonomously, and ...
How NASA is using AI on the Perseverance rover to study Mars rocks Space engineers have been using AI in rovers for some time now -- hence why today's Mars explorers are able to pick a safe landing site and to drive around a region autonomously. But something they haven't been able to...
Opportunity and its twin, Spirit, landed in different parts of Mars in January 2004 on a three-month mission to search for evidence of past water activity. Both rovers found plenty of such evidence, then kept on exploring the Red Planet; Spirit ceased communicating with Earth in 2010, while...
Their evidence: images taken by NASA's Opportunity and Curiosity rovers as well as the agency's HiRISE high-resolution camera attached to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. "Fungi thrive in radiation intense environments," the team writes in its paper. "Sequential photos document that fungus-like ...
traverse is about 15 miles long, an “epic journey” that will take years, Farley said. What scientists could discover about Mars, though, is worth the journey. To accomplish its goals, Perseverance will drive a little less than 0.1-miles per hour, three times faster than previous rovers. ...