Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab have perfected rotor technology

Engineer Jaakko Karras inspects the site of the next-generation Mars helicopter before testing it at high speed in the 25-foot Space Simulator at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in November 2025.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The first tests used a three-rotor design that could be flown on missions after SkyFall. The second test campaign used a realistic two-dimensional model that will be flown during SkyFall. The blades are slightly longer, so they reached the same supersonic speed at lower rpm. Faster acceleration resulted in a 30 percent increase in lifting capacity.

The team pushed the rotor speed to Mach 1.08, increasing the Mars vehicle’s capability by 30 percent. The breakthrough paves the way for future projects to support scientific payloads, including advanced sensors and large batteries for long-term storage.

“We thought we would have a chance to hit Mach 1.05, and we got to Mach 1.08 on our last flight. We are still analyzing the data, and there may be more on the table. These next-generation helicopters are going to be amazing,” said Shannah Withrow-Maser, an aerodynamicist at NASA Ames Research Center.

At the same time scientists are planning to send more helicopters to Mars, NASA is working on a very big project a rotorcraft called the Dragonfly for Saturn’s moon Titan. Dragon weighs about a ton, but flying this far away from Titan poses less of a challenge than Mars because its atmosphere is thicker than Earth’s.

Automatic payments on Intelligence The helicopter had two cameras: a black-and-white motion picture camera and a high-resolution camera. Its longest flight in 2022 lasted less than half a minute and lasted 161 seconds. The spacecraft had to land and recharge its batteries using solar arrays, and used the nearby Perseverance rover as a communication station with Earth crews.

The SkyFall mission will not have a rover nearby. The helicopters must communicate with mission controllers via orbiting satellites or a direct link to Earth. The rotorcraft of the future will use larger batteries for longer flights. Scientists want to put advanced instruments on a Mars helicopter to search for ice-like substances in the Martian soil. All of these will require heavy duty vehicles.

Breaking the sound barrier without breaking electronics brings us closer to using a new way to explore planets.