When a small 4-kilogram helicopter took off over a red landscape on Monday morning, it became the first boat to make a controlled and powered flight to a planet beyond Earth.
On Monday, at about 6:15 a.m. EDT, NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter team – along with eager spectators from around the globe – watched as data from the red planet reached Mission Control via a Deep Space Network antenna. The data indicated that the Ingenuity flight, which took place about four hours earlier, was a success.
“Sometimes we just have to do something to show that we can do it,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s associate science administrator, during the live broadcast of the NASA event. “When the Wright brothers first flew, they flew an experimental plane. And in the same way, the Mars helicopter is designed to show that we can fly an electric helicopter flight in the Martian atmosphere. ”
MiMi Aung, project manager of ingenuity, added, “it was the unwavering dream of our team from day one.”
On Monday, downlink leader Michael Starch, dressed in an orange Ingenuity polo shirt, studied his computer screen in the helicopter’s control room. “It simply came to our notice then. Early indications, ”he said, looking up at the monitor. “Data products look nominal.”
Aung sat close, grinning visibly under her mask.
“This is a downward link,” Starch repeated. “We extracted data products from Mars 2020.” Pause for 39 seconds. The room was silent. “This is a downward link,” he said again. “Confirming that we received the Mars 2020 telemetry. Confirming that we received the Mars 2020 event. Confirming that we received data products for helicopters. Starch nodded up and down.
Silence fell over the control room again. Aung moves his fingers. Some teammates nodded. Others glanced at their laptops and then back at their eagerly waiting colleagues.
“This is a downward link,” Starch said. “Confirming that we have data products for helicopters, telemetry for helicopters, helicopter event … battery data was received.”
Members of NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter team, including MiMi Aung (front) in NASA’s JPL spaceflight operations, are preparing to receive the downlink data showing whether the helicopter completed its first flight on April 19, 2021. Credit image: NASA / JPL-Caltech
Starch handed him the Flight Control, which gave the announcement: “Ingeniousness reports that it performed spin-up, take-off, ascent, hover, descent, landing, touchdown and spin-down.”
Aung raised two fingers and then fluttered his fists. The control room burst out of the palms of both the team members wearing the mask in person and those watching the Zoom.
“Altimeter data has been confirmed,” Flight Control said. Luck exploded in the control room. The altimetric plot of the flight, explained mechanical engineer Taryn Bailey during the live transmission of NASA, indicates a peak. It starts with a flat line, showing that ingenuity is grounded, has a steep incline, indicating that the helicopter spun and rose, a dwelling, showing that ingenuity glides and then another steep decline to the ground, representing the touchdown of ingenuity.
“Confirmed that the ingenuity made its first flight with an aircraft propelled to another planet,” said Flight Control.
As the fists and pumps continued, the team received its first image of the mission: a black-and-white photograph that ingenuity took as it floated above the Martian surface, its shadow – four rotors, four legs and a body. resembling a box of tissue – thrown under it.
Getting the ingenuity to fly to Mars was no easy task. This first flight, originally scheduled for Sunday, April 11, was delayed after the team’s engineers identified a possible problem. (The team decided to update the Ingenuity flight control software before attempting an initial flight.) And it took years of preparation back to Earth.
Since 2014, before testing ingenuity, the team has used helicopter models to simulate flight to Mars. These models were the forerunners of ingenuity and “went through extensive environmental and aerodynamic tests,” Bailey said.
To properly test these models and then ingenuity starting in 2019, “We had to simulate an atmosphere similar to that of Mars,” which is 1 percent of the Earth’s density, Bailey explained. The team did this using the thermal vacuum chamber of NASA’s 25-foot space simulator Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which allowed the team to control temperature and pressure to simulate the atmospheric density of Mars. The team also used a gravitational discharge system to compensate for the difference in gravity between Earth and Mars, Bailey said.
After these tests, “I said, ‘The next time we fly will be on Mars,'” Aung told an April 9 news conference.
The first flight of NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter was captured in this image from Mastcam-Z, a pair of zoomable cameras aboard NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover, on April 19, 2021. Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech
At four kilograms, the ingenuity was built to be both light and fast, strengthening its ability to grow in the incredibly thin atmosphere of Mars. Despite its small size, the wingspan of the helicopter is 4 feet peak-to-peak: “super large for something that essentially transports [a vehicle] the size of a tissue box, ”Bailey said.
Each of the four blades is made of a lightweight but strong composite material and weighs less than 2 ounces – the equivalent of four empty soda cans. To generate lift in an incredibly thin atmosphere, with a few molecules pushing around, the Ingenuity blades move at an average speed of 2,500 rpm. (Helicopters used on Earth usually operate at 450-500 rpm.)
While the first flight of ingenuity was modest – a 10-foot flight over the surface of the red planet and a touch – its next four flights will increase in technical difficulty. The team hopes to eventually explore parts of Mars’ land that it cannot navigate with land rovers like Perseverance. “The rover has to navigate around many obstacles that the helicopter can fly,” Bailey said.
“We sent five rovers to Mars and now we have an aerial dimension, which … raises the next stage of space exploration,” she added. His ingenuity and eventual successors could also allow for more collaboration and ultimately open the door to human exploration of other worlds, Bailey said.
Although the ingenuity team has already received still images of the helicopter’s initial flight from both ingenuity and perseverance, it expects to obtain video images and more high-resolution images in the next few days. You can view it here on the NASA website here.