NASA’s ingenious Mars helicopter is aiming for the first power test and the controlled flight of an aircraft on another planet no earlier than April 8.
At a news conference Tuesday, members of the agency’s California Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) explained that there are still a number of “challenges ahead” and that every step of the process is unprecedented.
“As with the helicopter, this type of deployment has never been done before,” said Farah Alibay, Mars Helicopter integration leader for the Perseverance rover. “Once we start implementing, we have no return. All activities are closely coordinated, irreversible and dependent on each other. If there is even a hint that something is not going as expected, we may decide to stop for a [Martian day] or more until we have a better idea of what’s going on. ”
Before ingenuity can even try to fly in the Martian atmosphere, a 4-kilogram rotation must first be launched.
On March 21, the Perseverance Mars rover – which brought ingenuity to the red planet – the shield of debris escaped who protected the helicopter and is currently on his way to “Aerodrome” 33 by 33 feet where ingenuity will try the first flight.
Once the rover reaches its flight zone, it will take about a week to get the helicopter up and running.
The Mars helicopter delivery system will rotate and release the helicopter approximately 5 inches above the surface. Perseverance then has 25 hours to move to “its rover observation location.”
The ingenuity – which will be autonomous and charged by its own solar panel – has a one-month window for up to five test flights.
“We will go through a series of commissioning days – about a week – in which we test our sensors, test the solo mechanism, test the engines to make sure they rotate correctly. And we will be very methodical and event-oriented as this engineering experiment unfolds, ”said Bob Balaram, chief Mars Helicopter engineer at JPL.
“And then we will be at a time when we will make our first flight and then we will progressively make several flights once we understand and analyze all the behavior of the first flight,” he said.
Last week, JPL announced that he chose a flight zone just north of the Perseverance landing site in Jezero Crater.
During the conference, the team of scientists announced that they will name the location in honor of their “colleague, mentor and leader”, Jakob van Zyl.
Van Zyl died of a heart attack in August last year and joined JPL in 1986. Ingenuity was one of his final projects, and Bobby Braun – JPL’s director of planetary science – said the engineer is the “guiding force” of their team.
Once the rover is loaded, has survived a cold Martian night, and is ready to try to fly, Perseverance will receive and transmit flight instructions to the helicopter.
“Several factors will determine the exact time for the flight, including modeling local wind patterns plus measurements taken by the Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer (MEDA) aboard Perseverance. The ingenuity will rotate its rotors at 2,537 rpm and, if all the final self-checks look good, they will withdraw, “NASA wrote in a statement on Tuesday. “After climbing at a speed of about 3 feet per second … the helicopter will place at 10 feet … above the surface for up to 30 seconds. Then the Mars helicopter will descend and touch back on the Martian surface. “
A few hours later, Perseverance will transmit data and possibly images and videos from its cameras to the JPL team to determine whether or not their first flight was a success.
Using what is offered to them, the engineers will then understand best how to proceed.
“Every step we have taken since this journey began six years ago has been unexplored territory in the history of aircraft,” Balaram said. “And while being deployed to the surface will be a great challenge, the survival of that first night only on Mars, without the rover protecting and keeping it powered, will be even greater.”
What could go wrong?
If there is an error or mistake, the process may take longer. Assuming that ingenuity manages to get through the first night, the team will spend the next few Martian days waving the rotor blades, testing the rotor system, and checking the performance of the inertial unit.
Worries aside, everything makes history.
In recognition, a small amount of material covering one of the wings The Wright brothers Flyer is on board ingenuity – adhered under the solar panel of the helicopter with an insulating tape.
Interestingly, the NASA Apollo 11 crew flew a different piece of material and a piece of wood from the Wright Flyer during the July 1969 lunar landing.
