【Actress Giving Permission to Director During Audition】

NASA announced that it's sending a helicopter to Mars in a little over two years.

If successful,Actress Giving Permission to Director During Audition this aerial Mars explorer, with a body about the size of a football, would be the first helicopter to fly on another planet.

NASA hopes to launch the prototype to Mars with the agency's 2020 rover, which is designed to hunt for signs of past life on the red planet.

SEE ALSO: SpaceX launches, then lands, a brand new version of its workhorse Falcon 9 rocket

“After the Wright Brothers proved 117 years ago that powered, sustained, and controlled flight was possible here on Earth, another group of American pioneers may prove the same can be done on another world," Thomas Zurbuchen, the Associate Administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said in a statement.

NASA administrator Jim Bridenstine tweeted out the announcement Friday just as an upgraded SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket launched to space.

Engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), in California, have been working on the Mars helicopter since 2013, but its late addition to the 2020 Mars rover mission came as a surprise. In the world of space exploration, two years is almost like a last-minute addition before an ambitious launch to the red planet.

Mashable Light Speed Want more out-of-this world tech, space and science stories? Sign up for Mashable's weekly Light Speed newsletter. By clicking Sign Me Up, you confirm you are 16+ and agree to our Terms of Use and Privacy Policy. Thanks for signing up!

After the rover lands on the red planet in 2021 after its launch in 2020, NASA scientists will use the spacecraft's cameras to scan the Martian terrain and find a suitable, flat place to set the tiny helicopter down.

Once the helicopter is settled, the scientists will command it to take off. After that, however, the helicopter will be on its own, flying autonomously.

"We don’t have a pilot and Earth will be several light-minutes away, so there is no way to joystick this mission in real time,” Mimi Aung, the Mars Helicopter project manager at JPL, said in the statement.

Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable

“Instead, we have an autonomous capability that will be able to receive and interpret commands from the ground, and then fly the mission on its own.”

NASA will test the drone for 30 days to see how it performs in an environment unlike Earth. The Martian atmosphere is quite thin -- just about 1 percent of Earth's -- so flying in such low air density is a challenge.

If the light, 4-pound craft works, future exploration missions could have similar, though more capable helicopters, which could survey unchartered, alien lands. NASA plans to test the craft up to five times over a 30 day period.

“The ability to see clearly what lies beyond the next hill is crucial for future explorers,” said Zurbuchen.

---

Featured Video For You

---

It takes absolute precision to construct Earth's largest telescope, which will peak into far-off alien worlds

---

• Science
• Deals
• Social Good
• Entertainment
• Shopping
• Digital Culture
• Games
• Tech

• The Secret Policeman at the Marathon
• Signal's new blur tool will help hide protesters' identities
• Elon Musk is 'personally' paying for some celebs' Twitter Blue ticks
• StableLM is the newest GPT
• I Still Know What You Did Last Summer
• Gamers take to 'Toontown' to stand with Black Lives Matter protesters
• Florida students 'Walkout 2 Learn' in opposition to Gov. Ron DeSantis
• The International by Richard Brody
• The Commons are Rumbling
• #Babygate trends after Trump surrounds the White House with fencing

• Manchester Redditor shares heartwarming gift from Muslim neighbour
• John Legend and Chrissy Teigen's 1
• Elderly man calmly eats his food while everyone else runs from a snake
• Elon Musk's weird Ambien tweets are back
• Apple makes watchOS 7 official, with handwashing, sleep tracking, and dancing
• Theresa May reveals the 'naughtiest thing' she's ever done
• People are dragging a Bollywood star for his ironic 'safe driving' talk
• 10 extremely 2020 moments that brought us together
• Tina Fey, NBC ask to have 30 Rock episodes featuring Blackface pulled
• These new iPhone features will save you from group chat chaos

• We Shall Be Terrible
• The Iraqi man who threw his shoes at George W. Bush is a Twitter hero for today's protesters
• The Soloist: Jason Moran Live at A Gathering of Tribes by J. D. Mitchell
• Postscript: Celebrating Sybille Bedford by Sylvia Brownrigg
• Through the Eyes of Men
• 'Yellowjackets': Whose body is being carried in the trailer?
• The Road to Harburg by Emilie Trice
• How tech leaders can do more for racial justice than just tweet
• Love, Actually
• Big Sky by Danny Singer

• The Arendt Center’s Dark Thinking
• Geoff Dyer Tonight! by Nicole Rudick
• Mayor of D.C. has city workers painting 'Black Lives Matter' on street to White House
• How to change the text size on Twitter
• Downward-Facing Capitalist Dogma
• Tesla to hold a Cybertruck delivery event in the third quarter of 2023
• Singer performs 'Bunker Boy,' a catchy tune about Trump's time in the bunker
• How to use Twitter without falling into a black hole of anxiety
• General McMaster and the Miniskirts
• Tobey Maguire's 'Spider