We all know that bees do good and necessary work here on Earth.

Without them and their pollinating, everything else would cease to exist, and sooner rather than later.

And apparently, you’re going to have to watch out for their stinging, buzzing behinds on Mars, too…at least, a robot version.

NASA, of course, has experience with robots on Mars. The Ingenuity helicopter flew 72 flights over 1,000 Martian days, which was much longer than they anticipated it would be able to perform.

Still, challenges remain if the “marsbees” will be a real thing.

“The Red Planet has a significantly lower gravity – one-third that of Earth’s – and an extremely thin atmosphere with only 1 percent the pressure at the surface compared to our planet. This means there are relatively few air molecules with which Ingenuity’s two 4-foot-wide rotor blades can interact to achieve flight.”

That said, they do believe that a swarm of bee-like robots could thrive there on the surface.

“Migrating flying animals showcase astonishing long-range flights disproportionate to their size. For example, Monarch butterflies fly 2,485 miles from North America to central Mexico, through thin air at heights around 11,000 feet. The wandering albatross can circumnavigate Antarctica  2 or 3 times, covering 74,565 miles.”

Studies have shown that the use of lightweight flexible wings lead to energy efficient flapping wing motion, which combined with flexible wings, could air in soaring and gliding in the Mars atmosphere.

Marsbees would be about the size of a bumblebee but with wings the size of a cicada. NASA would fit them with sensors and communication devices so that they could collect data from a rover that would act as their base.

They would be able to fly around 16 minutes before recharging.

“Our preliminary numerical results suggest that a bumblebee with a cicada wing can generate sufficient lift to hover in the Martian atmosphere. Moreover, the power required by the Marsbee will be substantially reduced by utilizing compliant wing structures and an innovative energy harvesting mechanism.”

The main appeal of the bees is that their weight is much less than other robots that have been used on the planet.

“The smaller volume, designed for the interplanetary spacecraft payload configuration, provides much more flexibility. Also, the Marsbee inherently offers more robustness to individual system failures.”

There is also a positive in the redundancy of having a whole swarm to fall back on if one “bee” fails.

I don’t know why, but the mental image of this is very satisfying.

A little bit of Earth out there in the cosmos.

If you thought that was interesting, you might like to read about a second giant hole has opened up on the sun’s surface. Here’s what it means.