Somewhere in Hollywood, a studio exec is already pitching a sequel to The Martian, with the plot that Matt Daemon finds himself stranded on Mars again and needs to fix the helicopter to fly him back to Earth.
To test the concept, now they know that it works they can come up with a dedicated mission that can cover a lot more ground - the rovers are slllloooowwwwwwww.
Even just for finding the best path for a rover, interesting places for a rover to go, you can make much better use of the extremely limited speed of a rover
Next flight is scheduled for Titan, which is a lot easier. The gravity is lower, but there's a lot more atmosphere, which means our helicopter can be nuclear powered!
Is that even possible? I mean… with how volatile and exotic the atmosphere is, wouldn’t what a craft would be doing be more akin to how a submarine travels under water? Would “flying” even be the correct term? Wouldn’t it be more like navigating violent torrents of differently-dense gaseous layers? Some of which are (sometimes) liquid?
Atmospheric pressure changes based on altitude, so there's probably some point where Jupiter's atmosphere that's a similar pressure and temperature to earth.
I looked it up, and the region of Jupiter's atmosphere at 1 bar is -100C. So you theoretically you could fly a modified Earth plane, it would just be a bit chilly.
Interestingly, though, Venus does have a zone with Earth-like temperature and pressure.
What makes cold temperatures a problem on earth is ice forming frombwater wapour in the atmosphere. No idea what you're likely to get on titan, but probably not that.
