In 2014, Amelia Quon and her team at NASA set out to build a helicopter capable of flying on Mars. Because Mars’s atmosphere is only one percent as dense as Earth’s, the air of Mars would not provide enough resistance to the rotating blades of a standard helicopter for the aircraft to stay aloft. For five years, Quon’s team tested designs in a lab that mimicked Mars’s atmospheric conditions. The craft the team ultimately designed can fly on Mars, because its blades are longer and rotate faster than those of a helicopter of the same size built for Earth. According to the text, why would a helicopter built for Earth be unable to fly on Mars?

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