When NASA Mars Rover of perseverance touch the red planet later this month, you will arrive with a lot of precious goods. New technologies include a drone that will be the first to ever fly to another planet: Ingenuity helicopter.
Ingenuity is essentially a test flight – it experiences flying to another planet for the first time and has limited capabilities. He weighs only about 4 kilograms, but his success will undoubtedly pave the way more ambitious exploration of the red planet.
“The Wright brothers showed that motor flight in Earth’s atmosphere was possible using an experimental aircraft,” Håvard Grip, chief engineer of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), said in a statement. “We are ingeniously trying to do the same for Mars.”
The rover does not carry any scientific tools to support it Perseverance, and is considered a completely separate mission from the rover. Currently, it is in the belly of Perseverance, only to appear after the duo touched Mars on February 18.
NASA / JPL-Caltech
Flying on Mars vs. Earth
The thin atmosphere of Mars, which is 99% less dense than that of Earth, will make it difficult for ingenuity to make enough lift to fly properly. Because of this, it was designed to be extremely lightweight. It is only 19 inches tall.
helicopter it has four large carbon fiber blades, modeled in two rotors that stretch about 4 feet and rotate in opposite directions at about 2,400 rpm – significantly faster than typical helicopters on Earth.
In addition, Jezero Crater, the landing place of Perseverance, is extremely cold – nighttime temperatures drop to minus-130 degrees Fahrenheit. Much of the power of ingenuity will go directly to keeping the heat, rather than the flight itself.
JPL flight controllers will not be able to control their ingenuity while flying. Due to significant communication delays, orders will be sent before flights and the team will not know how the flight went until it is over. Ingenuity will be able to make its own decisions about how to fly and stay warm.
“This is a technology that will really open up a new way for us to explore, just as the rovers did 20 years ago when we flew Sojourner on our first mission to Mars,” said Matt Wallace, deputy director of March 2020 project at JPL, he said during a press conference last week.
Perseverance carries more than two dozen rooms, and ingenuity has two of its own. Here on Earth, we will have a first-hand view of Ingenuity’s test flights from the perspective of the rover, as well as aerial photographs from the helicopter itself.
NASA / JPL-Caltech
What’s in a name?
The name Ingenuity was originally sent by Alabama high school student Vaneeza Rupani for the Mars 2020 rover, which was eventually named Perseverance. But the NASA team realized that it would be the perfect name for a helicopter that had so much creative thinking to get off the ground.
“The ingenuity and brilliance of people who work hard to overcome the challenges of interplanetary travel are what allow us all to experience the wonders of space exploration,” Rupani wrote. “Ingeniousness is what allows people to accomplish amazing things.”
Twenty-eight thousand students in the United States submitted essays and proposed names for the newest NASA rover on Mars. Virginia 7th grade Alexander Mather’s suggestion, Perseverance, was finally chosen.
The ingenuity must continue to pass the tests before the flight
The NASA team has a list of landmarks for the helicopter to survive before it ever takes off on Mars:
- Surviving launch from Cape Canaveral, which took place on July 30; the journey to Mars; and landing on February 18th
- It unfolds safely on the surface inside the belly of Perseverance
- Keeping autonomous on hard nights on Mars using internal heaters
- Charges autonomously with a solar-powered panel
After all this, Ingeniousness will take off for the first time, floating just a few meters from the ground for about 20 to 30 seconds before landing. If they make a successful first flight, the team will try up to four more tests within a month, each gradually pushing the distance and altitude limits, like a bird learning to fly.
“The ingenuity of the helicopter is a high risk, a high reward,” Wallace said. “It’s something we haven’t tried and there will always be a chance of having a problem. But that’s why we do it – we’ll learn from this problem if it occurs.”
United Launch Alliance
Adding a component of aerial exploration could prove crucial to future planetary exploration.
“The Ingenuity team did everything they could to test the helicopter on Earth, and we look forward to piloting our experiment in real-world Mars,” said MiMi Aung, Ingenuity’s project manager at JPL. “We will learn along the way and it will be the ultimate reward for our team to be able to add another dimension to how we explore other worlds in the future.”
Helicopters from future missions to Mars could act as robotic explorers, viewing the upper terrain that rovers cannot access or as spaceships carrying scientific instruments. They may even help future astronauts someday explore the red planet.
But before any of this can happen, perseverance must surviveseven minutes of terror“Which include entering, descending and landing on Mars. NASA will broadcast the historic event live on its website on February 18, starting at 14:15 ET.