NASA announced it would launch two more mini helicopters to Mars in an effort to return gathered Martian rocks and soil to Earth.
The space program’s Perseverance rover has gathered 11 samples to date, according to a report.
Under NASA’s new plan, either Perseverance or the helicopters will be used to load the samples onto a rocket that will return them to Earth a decade from now.
There’s “a diversity of materials already in the bag, so to speak, and really excited about the potential for bringing these back,” said Arizona State University’s Meenakshi Wadhwa, chief scientist for the retrieval effort.
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The helicopters will reportedly be modeled after NASA’s Ingenuity, which has completed 29 flights since arriving at Mars early last year. They will each weigh 4 pounds and have wheels and grappling arms.
Jeff Gramling, director of NASA’s Mars sample return program, said the helicopters would be designed to load one sample tube at a time.
“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.
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NASA said additional rock drilling is planned with the hopes of returning as many as 30 samples from Mars in 2031 with a touch-down on Earth in 2033.
