NASA is considering sending a miniature helicopter to Mars to serve as an aerial scout for its Mars 2020 rover.

The helicopter, which is intended primarily as a technology demonstrator, would be the first vehicle to traverse through the thin Martian atmosphere.

Flying on Mars is a challenge. The planet's atmospheric pressure is just one percent that of Earth's so the aircraft needs relatively big blades compared to the size of its body.

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"The way any of these helicopters work is the rotor blades spin up and they produce lift because of the density of the atmosphere. So once you lose that density, you've got to spin even faster or get bigger rotor blades or get lighter," Mike Meacham, a mechanical engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a NASA video about the project.

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