A full scale atmospheric flight experimental research environment for the Mars helicopter
This addresses the challenge of accurate testing for Mars atmospheric vehicles, which is incremental as it builds on existing reduced-gravity flight methods.
The researchers tackled the problem of testing Mars helicopters and similar vehicles by proposing a full-accuracy flight test environment using reduced-gravity atmospheric flights with a vacuum chamber, aiming to simulate Mars conditions for experimental validation.
We propose to develop a full-accuracy flight test environment for the Mars helicopter and related Mars-atmospheric vehicles. The experiment would use reduced-g atmospheric flights with an aircraft that houses a properly sized vacuum chamber.