Aerovironment Receives $10M JPL Contract to Collaborate on Designing and Developing Two Helicopters for Mars Sample Return Mission.

AeroVironment has been awarded a $10m contract by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) to co-design and co-develop conceptual designs and engineering development units of Mars Sample Recovery Helicopter flight systems. The helicopters build upon the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter design heritage and feature upgraded robotics to supplement aerial mobility. The two planned Sample Recovery Helicopters would be a secondary method of sample retrieval for the NASA/ESA Mars Sample Return Campaign. The Sample Recovery Helicopters would expand on Ingenuity’s design, adding wheels and gripping capabilities, to provide a secondary method to pick up cached sample tubes left on the surface by Perseverance and transport them to the Sample Retrieval Lander. Once the sample cache is launched off the red planet, another spacecraft would capture it in Mars orbit, and then bring it back to Earth safely and securely in the early to mid-2030s. Scientists believe the samples could shed light on whether life has ever existed on Mars.