NASA unveils plan for first helicopter flight to Mars

So far, human exploration on Mars has been measured in the circular motion of orbiters above the planet and the meandering trails of rovers on the ground below. Early next month, NASA will enter the elusive space between these two realms, with the launch of the box-shaped helicopter Ingenuity.

Equipped with two 2400 rpm rotors (one placed on top of the other), solar-powered lithium batteries and four carbon composite feet, Ingenuity is expected to perform the first powered test flight and controlled from humanity on another planet. Now, the NASA team operating Ingenuity has determined the area in which the $ 80 million helicopter will fly over Martian skies: a 300-foot oblong area in the immediate vicinity of the Perseverance rover, which landed on Mars this month. latest.

“The Perseverance rover carries with it the most advanced suite of scientific instruments we have ever sent to Mars,” Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s Planetary Sciences Division, said at a press conference today. hui. In addition to the rover’s research equipment, he brought a special side project: the Mars helicopter.

Like a baby bat clinging to its airborne parent, Ingenuity arrived at Jezero Crater strapped to Perseverance’s belly. The helicopter has yet to be deployed, still nestled in the safety of the rover’s power supply. But once it splits up, the craft’s plan is short and sweet: take off and hover, and, if the team is lucky, do it multiple times. Each flight is scheduled to last 20 to 30 seconds.

While much of Mars is perfectly flat, including the expanse of the ancient lake bed where Perseverance landed, there would be huge benefits to crossing the planet by air. NASA scientists hope the helicopter will chart the way for more advanced Martian craft in the future and that it can inform flight missions elsewhere, such as the expected difficulties of Dragonfly on Titan Moon.

Once Ingenuity separates from Perseverance, the rover will rush out of the area to make sure the Experimental Helicopter is not shaded before Martian sunrise. (There will only be enough energy left from its umbilical-type connection to the rover to last a night on Mars without solar power, so it’s important that it has free access to sunlight the next day.) Perseverance will head to the new Van. Zyl Overlook about 200 feet from the helicopter drop site to observe the completion of the smaller vessel. The belvedere is not monumental; about 3 feet higher than the flying area, but high enough for a good view.

After being tested in simulated Martian atmospheres on Earth (think of a vacuum-sealed grain silo), the helicopter is currently scheduled to try the real thing no sooner. that April 8, according to Bob Balaram, the chief engineer of Ingenuity. Because it uses standard components that help the helicopter navigate the thin Martian air and transmit information to Perseverance, Ingenuity is truly a computer genius compared to its predecessors.

“The particular computer we use here on Ingenuity is about 150 times faster than the one on Perseverance,” Balaram said at a NASA press conference today. “If you add up all the computers since the beginning that have taken off into the solar system and add it all up, we reduce it by two orders of magnitude.”

Despite this, Ingenuity is still an interplanetary demo, which means the mini-chopper only has a brief period of operation. It will have one Earth month to test its wings – er, rotors – and could fly up to five times. The NASA team did not want to say if the subsequent flights could be more ambitious than the first and brief test.

Not a group to dodge an opportunity to symbolism, NASA tied a piece of fabric the size of a postage stamp under the helicopter’s solar panel. It is a fabric carved from one of the Wright brothers’ first controlled flight powered airplanes, flown at Kitty Hawk nearly 120 years ago. The brothers auctioned off sheaths of the fabric to secure funds for future attempted thefts, and buyers of one of these fragments supplied it to the March 2020 team. It’s an arc of extremely fitting story that the fabric should now find itself flying once again, a literal world away.