NASA Unveiled The Mars Chopper

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has just shown off early renderings of an enormous Mars Chopper concept, a proposed follow-up to the space agency's groundbreaking Ingenuity Mars Helicopter.

The six-rotor monstrosity could turn out to be "the size of an SUV," according to NASA, allowing it to carry science payloads up to 11 pounds across distances of up to 1.9 miles per Mars day.

A sleek animation shared by NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab last week shows the massive three-legged drone gliding over a rugged, mountainous landscape.

In other words, the Chopper could pick up right where Ingenuity left off. Its much smaller ancestor sent its final transmission back to Earth in April, bookending an astounding proof-of-concept mission.

The four-pound rotorcraft, which became the first-ever human-made object to take flight on a different planet in 2021, completed 72 flights in just under three years, which was an astonishing achievement, given that it was designed to fly only five times over 30 Mars days.

Whether NASA's Chopper will get even close to that kind of success remains unclear, but now that Ingenuity has blazed its path, it's still entirely possible.

According to NASA, the concept "remains in early conceptual and design stages." Its main task would be to assist scientists in studying even larger swathes of the Martian terrain, at relatively high speeds.

In particular, the Chopper could go where rovers can't, allowing scientists to get an unprecedented glimpse of inaccessible areas of the Red Planet.