NASA StreaM

We Go: To the Moon and on to Mars. Our generation, the Artemis generation, will explore farther than we've ever gone before. The Artemis program will send the first woman and next man to walk on the surface of the Moon and build a sustainable base to prepare for missions to Mars and beyond.

The laws of physics may say it's near impossible to fly on Mars, but actually flying a heavier-than-air vehicle on the Red Planet is much harder than that. NASA’s Mars 2020 mission will deliver a technology demonstration that will put the idea to the test -- a helicopter that will perform controlled flight on Mars. For more about NASA's Mars missions, visit https://nasa.gov/mars and https://mars.nasa.gov

The Mars celebration Saturday, June 1, 2019, in Mars, Pennsylvania. NASA is in the small town to celebrate Mars exploration and share the agency’s excitement about landing astronauts on the Moon in five years. The celebration includes a weekend of Science, Technology, Engineering, Arts and Mathematics (STEAM) activities. Photo Credit: (NASA/Bill Ingalls)

In January 2019, NASA's Mars Helicopter technology demonstration was put through rigorous tests to verify it is ready for the Red Planet. While flying helicopters is commonplace here on Earth, flying one, hundreds of millions of miles (kilometers) away in the thin Martian atmosphere, is something else entirely. The team recreated the gravity and flying conditions at Mars in JPL's Space Simulator, a 25-foot wide vacuum chamber. The helicopter hovered 2 inches (its target height) to fulfill its flight readiness requirement for Mars. The Mars Helicopter is scheduled to launch with the agency’s Mars 2020 rover mission in July 2020 to demonstrate the viability and potential of heavier-than-air vehicles on the Red Planet.