NASA News - Mars Reading Quiz

Which paragraph from the article BEST supports the conclusion that designing a successful helicopter flight on Mars is challenging?

• NASA has been exploring Mars for over 50 years. The U.S. space agency has sent orbiters, landers

  and rovers to explore Earth's neighbor. NASA's next mission will be the first to send a tiny robotic

  helicopter to another planet.

• It took four years of testing and redesign to create a helicopter capable of operating on the Red Planet.

  Mars' atmosphere is very thin. Hovering just 10 feet above the surface is the equivalent of soaring

  100,000 feet above Earth.

• The helicopter is equipped with solar cells. The cells will charge its lithium batteries and an internal

  heating mechanism to keep it warm through the Martian night. On Mars, it can get very cold, especially

  at night. Temperatures can plummet to minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

• The helicopter's first flight should be a short one: It will climb 10 feet and hover for 30 seconds before

  returning to the ground. If all goes according to plan, the craft will make four more flights over the course

  of a 30-day test campaign, each progressively longer and more complex than the first.

Which selection from the article describes how scientists hope to use the information provided by the tiny helicopter?

• "To make it fly at that low atmospheric density, we had to scrutinize everything, make it as light as

  possible while being as strong and as powerful as it can possibly be," said Mimi Aung. She is the Mars

  Helicopter project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

• The helicopter is equipped with solar cells. The cells will charge its lithium batteries and an internal

  heating mechanism to keep it warm through the Martian night. On Mars, it can get very cold, especially

  at night. Temperatures can plummet to minus 100 degrees Fahrenheit.

• The car-size rover is equipped with a drill for collecting rock samples, and instruments for conducting

  chemical analyses and seeking potentially habitable environments. An experiment to test the viability of

  producing oxygen from the planet's carbon dioxide-rich atmosphere will be performed.

• If all goes according to plan, the craft will make four more flights over the course of a 30-day test

  campaign, each progressively longer and more complex than the first.

"The Mars Helicopter is an autonomous spacecraft. It has a meter-long rotor and a body the size of a chihuahua."

What is the best definition of the word "autonomous" as it is used in this sentence?

• Out of control

• well researched

• self-driven

• freee

"If the Mars Helicopter fails, the overall Mars 2020 mission will not be harmed. But the potential upsides for NASA are thrilling."

The word "thrilling" in the sentence above tells the reader that the possibilities for the Mars Helicopter are:

• Exciting

• Mysterious

• Informative

• Overwhelming

According to the article, this is the first mission that sends a tiny robotic helicopter to Mars.

True or False

• True

• False

What is the theme of this article?

• Finding life on Mars

• Looking for life on Mars

• To test technology on Mars

• Inform humans about aliens on Mars