2 mini choppers to be launched by NASA to help return rocks from Mars

Cape Canaveral: Two more mini-helicopters are being launched by NASA to Mars to help bring back Martian rock and soil samples to Earth.

According to the plan announced on Wednesday, NASA's Perseverance rover would do double duty and carry the Cache rocket that would then launch them from Mars after ten years.

11 samples have already been gathered by Perseverance, and further rock drilling is planned. The latest sample, a sedimentary rock, is the most promising to contain possible evidence of ancient Martian life, said Meenakshi Wadhwa of Arizona State University, lead scientist on the retrieval effort.

There's "a diversity of materials already in the bag, so to speak, and really excited about the potential for bringing these back," she said. If Perseverance breaks, two helicopters, built and launched this decade, will carry samples in replacement rockets.

The helicopters are modelled after NASA's successful Ingenuity, which has made 29 flights since reaching Mars with Perseverance early last year. The helicopter weighs only 4 pounds (1.8 kg). Newer versions will have wheels and grappling arms.

The helicopters will be modelled after NASA's successful Ingenuity, which has made 29 flights since arriving with Perseverance at Mars early last year. The chopper weighs just 4 pounds (1.8 kilograms). The new versions would have wheels and grappling arms.

NASA officials said Perseverance's impressive performance on Mars prompted them to abandon plans to launch a separate fetch rover, AFP reported.

Jeff Gramling, director of NASA's Mars Sample Return Program, said the revised path forward is simple. The design of each helicopter is such that it can lift one sample tube at a time and will make several trips back and forth.

"We have confidence that we can count on Perseverance to bring the samples back and we've added the helicopters as a backup means," Gramling said.

NASA is partnering with the European Space Agency on the recovery mission. If everything goes smoothly, close to 30 samples will leave Mars in 2031 and reach Earth in 2033. Lab analysis is needed to see if any samples contain traces of microbes that lived on Mars billions of years ago when there was water on the planet.

The grounded ExoMars rover, on the other hand, cannot be repositioned to help in the sample retrieval, said David Parker, ESA's director of human and robotic exploration. It was brought back into storage after Russia and Europe cut ties with the project because of the war in Ukraine. Russia was supposed to provide the rocket ride.

Parker added that a decision on when the rover can launch to Mars later this decade won't come until late fall.