The Book of the Year 2018 (No Such Thing As a Fish) by No Such Thing As A Fish

Author:No Such Thing As A Fish
Language: eng
Format: epub, azw3
ISBN: 9781847948397
Publisher: Random House
Published: 2018-10-17T22:00:00+00:00

MARS

NASA is sending robo-bees to Mars.

The bumblebee-sized robots, known as ‘marsbees’, have giant cicada-sized wings, and will map Mars and search for signs of life. The idea (still in its early stages) is that the bees will replace the bulkier rovers we have been sending for the last 20 years. The bot bugs were selected by NASA as one of 25 projects they’ll be funding as part of their Innovative Advanced Concepts scheme. Other projects picked from that scheme include a flying amphibious robot called Shapeshifter and a steam-powered jumping robot named Sparrow that will explore Saturn’s moon Titan.

Robot bees aren’t the only flying machines NASA want to send to Mars. They are also planning to send a helicopter. Travelling to Mars as part of NASA’s 2020 Rover Mission, the helicopter will be humankind’s first-ever attempt to fly a heavier-than-air vehicle on another planet.

Flying the helicopter on Mars won’t be easy. The Red Planet’s atmosphere is 1 per cent of the thickness of the Earth’s, which means that when the chopper is sitting on the Martian surface, it will already be at the Earth equivalent of 30,000 metres in the air. Since the current altitude record for a helicopter is 12,000 metres, that will be quite a challenge. In order to fly in the incredibly thin Mars atmosphere, the blades will have to spin at a rate of 3,000 times a minute, 10 times faster than those of the average Earth helicopter.

One other way in which a Mars helicopter will differ from an Earth one is that it will be roughly the size of a cricket ball.

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