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Blades Ingenuity’s 2-foot-long blades are specially designed for the Martian atmosphere, which is 1 percent the density of Earth’s. “As the blades rotate, they tend to flap up and down a little bit, which interferes with control,” Balaram tells Popular Mechanics. “On Earth, [this motion] gets stamped out. On Mars, in the thin air, it doesn t get stamped out.” Grip, a research technologist also at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, likens the unsteady motion to riding a bicycle with heavy grocery bags hanging from the handle bars. To counteract the wobble and make the flight smoother, the blades, which have a foam core and a carbon fiber coating, are crafted to be lightweight but extremely stiff. ....