it looks cool but so long as it's attached to a helicopter, why use a crane? it's not like it'll be cooked by jets if it's directly below the transporter. Just make a disposable rotor system that's directly shed after it lands, maybe even connected to the lander battery system for simplicity.

I really don't see a quadcopter working on mars. a light gas airship on the other hand.

mhh, atmosphere on mars is that tight to use a quadrocopter?

The earth simulation was great and all but I'm intrigued as to how they are going to actually get this to work on mars. Where the surface atmosphere is less than one 10th of earth although the gravity is around one third.
I am thinking you would need very large prop's and work them with the tips travelling at super sonic velocities.

That's cool but neither article says anything about how it will be affected by the much thinner atmosphere of Mars (1/100 of Earth)

This gizmo would have to operate in the very thin Martian atmosphere ... something akin to 120,000 feet altitude on earth ... I wonder how large the copter blades would have to be ....

and how exactly will perform a quadcopter in an atmosphere which is only 1% density compared with Earth's atmosphere?

GPS and quadricopters on Mars? Yes, sure...

To use a GPS navigating quadcopter on Mars, the first step is to send a fleet of GPS satellites to Mars.

Since the disposable quadcopter would have to be very large compared to the rover, this doesn't seem like a good idea. The stresses on the quadcopters extra large rotors would be very extreme when decelerating down from orbit even with a parachute or retrorockets doing the initial slow down. A steerable parachute paired with retro rockets would probably be simpler for a throw away lander. Another idea would be for the rover to be attached to a large blimp and touch down several times in different locations. Depending on the Martian winds this might be a short lived mission but waiting for days for the current rovers to move short distances at a snails pace seems to waste a lot of time. Being able to hop from place to place would allow a larger area to be surveyed for later missions.