13 things you should know in tech today

NASA has an answer for everything it seems, including this puzzle: how do you fly a helicopter on Mars, where the Martian atmosphere is about one percent as dense as Earth, and may be as cold as minus 130 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 90 degrees Celsius)?

• The solution, it seems, is to keep your helicopter light.
• NASA’s helicopter uses more than “1500 individual pieces of carbon fiber, flight-grade aluminum, silicon, copper, foil and foam,” weighing no more than 4 pounds (1.8kg).
• And you spin carbon fibre blades as fast as you can!

Testing that theory:

• Testing in like-for-like conditions involved either ascending to 100,000 feet, or adapting the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Space Simulator in Pasadena, California.
• The JPL chamber was first cleared by vacuum of all air, with a tiny amount of carbon dioxide added to simulate the Martian environment.
• Then, a ‘gravity offload’ system was cooked up to simulate Mars’ reduced gravity, which is about 38% of earth.
• The whole test was recorded and uploaded to Vimeo, and, as I’m sure you’ve guessed by now, it took off!

• NASA only wanted to see it rise two inches, and that it did.
• “We only required a 2-inch (5-centimeter) hover to obtain all the data sets needed to confirm that our Mars helicopter flies autonomously as designed in a thin Mars-like atmosphere; there was no need to go higher,” said Teddy Tzanetos, test conductor for the Mars Helicopter at JPL, in a JPL press release.
• “It was a heck of a first flight.”
• Should all continue to go to plan, the helicopter arrives on Mars in February 2021, as part of the Mars 2020 rover.
• “The next time we fly, we fly on Mars,” project manager MiMi Aung said.
• “Watching our helicopter go through its paces in the chamber, I couldn’t help but think about the historic vehicles that have been in there in the past. The chamber hosted missions from the Ranger Moon probes to the Voyagers to Cassini, and every Mars rover ever flown. To see our helicopter in there reminded me we are on our way to making a little chunk of space history as well.”

Bonus: If you’re a German speaker, NASA wants to pay you to stay in bed for two months (Insider)