Nasa will send helicopter to Mars to test otherworldly flight
Nasa is sending a helicopter to Mars, in the first test of a heavier-than-air aircraft on another planet, BBC reported.
According to the source, the Mars Helicopter will be bundled with the US space agency's Mars rover when it launches in 2020.
Its design team spent more than four years shrinking a working helicopter to "the size of a softball" and cutting its weight to 1.8kg (4lbs). It is specifically designed to fly in the atmosphere of Mars, which is 100 times thinner than Earth's.
Soviet scientists dropped two balloons into the atmosphere of Venus in the 1980s. No aircraft has ever taken off from the surface of another planet.