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As part of a future mission to Mars, NASA is considering including a small helicopter capable of operating independently in the Martian environment. The Martian atmosphere is extremely thin, with a density of only 1-2% of Earth's atmospheric density at sea level; this significantly alters the flight dynamics of the vehicle and has implications for vehicle design and control. In this paper we focus on guidance and control for a Mars Helicopter, and in particular on the challenges that are unique to operating in the Mars environment. In 2016, the first-ever controlled flight of a helicopter in Martian atmospheric conditions was performed in the 25-ft Space Simulator at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. We provide details of the effort leading to this flight demonstration, including

As part of NASA's Mars 2020 rover Mission, an autonomous small-scale helicopter will be sent to Mars to conduct a series of demonstration flights, to validate the feasibility and utility of using helicopters for Mars exploration. In this paper, we present a high-level overview of the flight control system for the Mars Helicopter, including the Guidance, Navigation, and Control subsystems, and the implementation of these on the flight avionics hardware. We also discuss the concept of operations, and the testing, verification, and validation performed in a variety of test venues in preparation for Mars flight.

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