NASA has successfully completed the first test flight of a helicopter built to fly on Mars as the space agency looks to find new ways of exploring the red planet.

The helicopter is scheduled to reach Mars in two years time as part of NASA’s Mars 2020 rover mission, which aims to answer key questions such as whether humans could one day live in its harsh environment.

But flying it won’t be easy. Remotely controlling a helicopter from hundreds of millions of miles away, on top of Mars' thin atmosphere and temperatures as low as -90C, is an incredibly difficult technical feat.

To ensure its success, NASA had to replicate the red planet’s environmental conditions at its Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena California.

"The Martian atmosphere is only about one percent the density of Earth's," said NASA project manager MiMi Aung.

"Our test flights could have similar atmospheric density here on Earth - if you put your airfield 100,000 feet (30,480 meters) up. So you can't go somewhere and find that. You have to make it."