Last weekend, NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter flew through the thin air of Mars for more than 100 minutes; This is a feat that would have been considered extremely ambitious just a few years ago.

Originally designed as a simple technology demonstration, the Marscopter far outlasted the first lunar mission of five flights; Its role was then expanded to explore the Martian landscape and assist NASA’s life-seeking rover Perseverance. Building on Ingenuity’s success, scientists are already planning to build two more mini helicopters. They will serve as backup helicopters in the space agency’s mission to deliver tubes containing Mars samples to Earth. Teams are also building another spacecraft that will visit Saturn’s moon Titan.

The new study proposes an additional tool to make the most of future space helicopters: a magnetometer that can collect unique data on magnetic fields recorded in the crust of any inhabitant of the solar system studied.

“The era of helicopter exploration of Mars has already begun,” researchers write in a new study. “We argue that magnetometer-based studies can use weather technology to answer some important questions about the early evolution of Mars.”

Scientists say helicopters flying to Mars will be most useful in filling in gaps in hyperlocal observational data collected by pairs of landers and rovers on the surface, as well as in global data collected by orbiters orbiting the planet hundreds of kilometers away.

Unlike Earth, Mars does not generate its own magnetic field, and its dynamo, a spinning blob of molten material in the planet’s core that once powered a significant magnetic field, is believed to have ceased about three or four billion years ago, leaving countless numbers behind. There are pockets of magnetized bark in its path. But the depth and strength of these scattered fields on Mars, which could shed light on the planet’s evolution, have not been comprehensively mapped.

Thus, low-altitude powered flights on Mars could detect some of these “undiscovered signals” through airborne measurements of canyons, cliffs, craters, and dunes, perhaps only at an altitude of tens of kilometers; otherwise it would be considered too dangerous for travelers. small for spacecraft. It orbits a planet of capture, according to a new study.

“The helicopter is an ideal platform to overcome such limitations,” the scientists say. Examining these small-scale magnetic fields “can provide information that cannot be obtained from orbit.”

There is precedent on Earth that such an initiative could be beneficial. Data from aerial surveys had previously revealed a pattern of magnetic anomalies along tectonic plate boundaries, ultimately providing important evidence for the planet’s now well-established magnetic field reversals. The same pattern was not found in data from Earth-orbiting satellites, according to a new study. Source