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It’s fitting that the mission, an experimental companion to the Perseverance rover, carries a piece of history. A postage stamp-sized piece of muslin cloth that covered one of the wings of the Wright Brothers Flyer is attached to a cable under the helicopter’s solar panel.
The first powered, controlled flight on Earth took place near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, when Orville and Wilbur Wright flew the 120-foot Flyer for 12 seconds in December 1903.
“When NASA’s Sojourner rover landed on Mars in 1997, it proved it was possible to roam the Red Planet and completely redefined our approach to how we explore Mars. Likewise, we want to know more about the potential of Ingenuity for the future of scientific research ”. Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, said in a statement.
However, before this historic flight to Mars, Ingenuity must complete a series of steps that will occur over the next few weeks – and they will test the 4-pound rotorcraft’s ability to survive the harsh conditions of Mars without the help of Perseverance. .
The rover is currently heading to the nearby 33-by-33-foot (10-by-10-meter) airfield that the Ingenuity team chose to test the helicopter for flight. The site was named after Jakob van Zyl, former director of solar system exploration and associate director of formulation and project strategy at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. He passed away in August 2020.
After dropping Ingenuity onto the surface, which is nice and flat, Perseverance will carefully step back and take pictures of the helicopter. Although it sounds simple, this process will take a little over six days. The commands sent by the teams on Earth will help release the locking mechanism that holds the helicopter against the belly of the rover.
A cable cutter A pyrotechnic device will trigger, allowing an arm holding Ingenuity to spin the helicopter, which is currently horizontal.
Ingenuity will follow a series of commands to unfold two of its landing legs.
An electric motor will complete the rotation of the helicopter until it is vertical and the other two landing legs deploy.
“As with anything helicopter-related, this type of deployment has never been done before,” Farah Alibay, Mars helicopter integration manager for the Perseverance rover, said in a statement. “All activities are closely coordinated, irreversible, and dependent on each other. If there is even a hint that something is not going as planned, we can decide to wait a (day) or more until then. that we have a better idea of what’s going on. “
The final stages of the deployment include suspending the helicopter 5 inches above the Martian surface during a final charging session while Ingenuity is still connected to the rover.
“Once we’ve cut the cord with Perseverance and dropped those last five inches to the surface, we want our great friend to run away as quickly as possible so that we can get the sun’s rays on our solar panel and get started. to recharge our batteries, “Bob Balaram, chief Mars helicopter engineer at JPL, said in a statement.
Next, the team will confirm that Ingenuity is firmly seated on the surface of Mars and communicating.
Once on the Martian surface, the helicopter will perform torsion and rotation tests of the rotor blades. It will need to recharge using its solar panel and withstand the freezing Martian nights, which can drop to less than 130 degrees Fahrenheit.
Teams will closely monitor weather conditions on Mars, including wind and measurements taken by the Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer instrument on the rover, which could impact flight.
Ingenuity will have 31 days to complete its series of test flights, which could include up to five depending on the success of the first. The first flight involves the helicopter lifting about 10 feet off the ground and hovering for about 30 seconds before landing. Subsequent flights will last longer.
Within hours of the first flight, data will be sent back from Ingenuity, along with the rover’s cameras and microphones that will watch and record the flight, to determine if it was successful.
Over the next two days, footage from the helicopter’s cameras will also be returned. Together, the data and images will help the Ingenuity team plan future flights.
“Ingenuity is an experimental engineering flight test – we want to see if we can fly to Mars,” said MiMi Aung, project manager for the Ingenuity Mars helicopter at JPL. “We are convinced that all the engineering data that we want to obtain both on the surface of Mars and at altitude can be realized in this 30 ground window.”
The Soils are Martian days, which last slightly longer than Earth days.
The team stressed that the helicopter is an experience and that each step will be approached with deliberation, which makes things more flexible when it comes to dates and milestones. And, of course, it all depends on the ingenuity that survived the milestones leading up to the flight.
Flight to Mars is made more difficult by the thin atmosphere of the Red Planet, which is only 1% of the Earth’s surface density. Mars also receives half of the solar energy the Earth makes during the day.
That’s why Ingenuity was designed to be small and light – and built with internal heaters to survive freezing nights.
“Every step we’ve taken since this journey began six years ago has been uncharted territory in aviation history,” Balaram said of Ingenuity. “And while deploying to the surface will be a big challenge, surviving that first night on Mars alone. , without the rover that protects it and keeps it powered up, will be even bigger. “
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