On April 19, 2021, a small experimental helicopter named Ingenuity took off from Martian soil and entered the history books. The autonomous machine’s rotors spun furiously in the thin atmosphere to produce enough lift, propelling the craft the height of a one-story building. Ingenuity hovered and then landed safely, providing humanity’s first controlled flight to another planet. The site where he landed was named Wright Brothers Field, after the pioneers of aviation.

In the mid-2030s, a small car-sized rotorcraft called Dragonfly is expected to take the next step. It will land on Saturn’s largest moon, Titan, to begin humanity’s first mission to explore it. In one hour, Dragonfly will fly further than any surface rover has ever traveled to another planet. The multi-rotor drone-like vehicle will fly over Titan’s surface, landing for one Titan day (16 Earth days) to perform experiments before blasting off to its next destination.

But the biggest challenge – and perhaps the biggest opportunity – for extraterrestrial aviation is the extremely hot planet Venus, with its extreme heat, pressure and acidic atmosphere. No lander survived more than 127 minutes on its cracked, slate-like surface.

Instead, scientists propose sending two planes to Venus. One is a solar-powered glider-type aircraft that can soar through the planet’s more benign upper atmosphere indefinitely, the other a flying wing design that will soar through the harsh near-surface conditions.

“Developing the technology to be able to land on Venus is difficult,” says Dr. Eldar Noe Dobrea, a senior scientist at the Planetary Science Institute in California, which develops mission concepts for Venus. “The only alternative is to fly through the atmosphere.”

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Teddy Tzanetos, robotics technologist with the Air Mobility Group and Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Team Leader, is already working on designing the next generation of Martian helicopters. “We know what the Wright Brothers’ first flight did for humanity here on Earth, and I think we’ll follow that same pattern on other planets,” he says.

“I hadn’t thought of an analog comparison like that, but the Dragonfly is the next step after Ingenuity’s first flight,” says Elizabeth “Zibi” Turtle, principal investigator at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. “It will be the first [aerial] vehicle to transport its entire scientific payload from place to place.”