Last week, one of the most innovative missions in space exploration came to a bitter end. NASA’s famously successful Ingenuity rotorcraft — the 3.5-pound helicopter-like robot collecting samples on Mars — finally came to a crashing end. But already NASA and the European Space Agency are looking ahead to the next generation of space helicopters.
More robust than its predecessor, with at least 66 test flights under its belt and a new dual-rotor system, and carbon-fiber blades that can nearly reach Mach 1 speeds — the heir to Ingenuity has been preparing to take over its predecessor’s mission inside the agency’s 25-foot space simulator at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California.
