"China's Mars Mission: Collecting Samples with a Foldable Helicopter"

China is considering using a foldable quadcopter named MarsBird-VII to assist in its mission to collect samples from Mars. The design, outlined in a journal article, describes a foldable copter that can autonomously deploy and collect up to 0.22 pounds of samples. The quadcopter would use a navigation method combining inertial and binocular vision to fly autonomously on Mars. While flight tests in a simulated Martian environment are yet to be conducted, the potential development of such plans highlights the growing importance of flight in Mars exploration.