A simple add-on to Ingenuity-like crafts could gather unique data, scientists say.
— a rotating blob of molten material in the planet's core that once powered a sizable magnetic field — is thought to have shut down about three or four billion years ago, leaving countless pockets of magnetized crust in its wake. However, the depth and strength of these scattered patches on Mars, which can shed light onto the planet's evolution, are not mapped comprehensively.
So, powered flights at low-altitudes on Mars, perhaps only tens of kilometers high, could detect some of those"unexplored signals" with aerial measurements of canyons, steep slopes, craters and dunes otherwise considered too dangerous for rovers but too tiny for spacecraft orbiting the planet to capture, according to the new study.
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