NASA's NEXT Mars helicopter will be 'bigger and better' with a robotic arm to collect samples

NASA's Ingenuity made history as the first powered vehicle to fly on another planet and with this great success, the space agency is already looking to design its predecessor that aims to be bigger and better. The roboticists at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory have been sketching out what they call the Mars Science Helicopter (MSH), a 66-pound hexacopter capable of collecting samples from the Red Planet. Ingenuity, on the other hand, weighs just four pounds and features only two rotors. Unlike Ingenuity, which is a scout for the Perseverance rover, MSH would carry and deploy scientific payloads and be given its own formation on Mars to explore for ancient signs of life. On Earth, minerals found at sites similar to Mawrth Vallis preserve organic material – and that is what NASA hopes to find on Mars.