NASA researchers are developing thinner, asymmetrical rotor blade designs intended to let future Mars helicopters fly higher and farther while carrying science instruments. A team at NASA's Ames Research Center in California, working with Imperial College London and Nagoya University in Japan, tested a new blade cross-section, or airfoil, named roamx-0201. The design was developed using simulations and algorithms tuned to Martian conditions, then evaluated in wind tunnel tests.

According to NASA, high-fidelity simulations comparing the new airfoil with Ingenuity's blades found that redesigned blades could expand the distance covered in one uninterrupted flight from Ingenuity's 0.7 kilometers to as much as 18.7 kilometers. The findings were announced in a paper published Sept. 22 in a journal of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. The roamx-0201 blades performed well partly because they could operate longer at higher speeds before drag divergence, a sudden performance drop as rotors approach the speed of sound, which is lower on Mars.

The design also deliberately disrupts airflow at the leading edge to generate lift, and under the conditions studied it showed significantly improved behavior at stall, when performance drops sharply and flight becomes unstable. NASA's SkyFall mission, scheduled for launch in 2028, would build on Ingenuity's legacy with a trio of helicopters. NASA said the technology is not yet ready for Mars and that ongoing tests are helping engineers resolve differences between computational predictions and real-world performance.