NASA is about to pilot its helicopter to Mars for the first time – a feat that could revolutionize spaceflight.
The helicopter, called Ingeniousness, traveled nearly 300 million miles to the red planet in the belly of the Perseverance rover. He is now sitting at an aerodrome in the Jezero Crater of Mars, where he is to make the first motorized controlled flight ever made to another planet.
The ingenuity is scheduled to fly autonomously early Monday, and NASA expects to receive data from the helicopter around 6:15 ET. Then the agency will know if the test flight was successful.
Perseverance took a selfie with ingenuity on April 6.
NASA / JPL-Caltech / MSSS / Sean Doran
You can see what happened to the helicopter as NASA learned it through a live stream from mission control at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California (incorporated below). In the live stream, mission controllers can receive even the first photos in flight from the helicopter.
In the first flight of ingenuity, it is expected to rise about 10 feet from the ground, float there, then tap back slightly. The helicopter must run the entire flight autonomously. If all goes well, the ingenuity will try up to four more air getaways in 30 days. Each of these flights would be more and more difficult, and the drone ventures higher and higher each time.
NASA / JPL-Caltech
Because it takes at least eight minutes for a signal from Mars to travel to Earth and vice versa, the engineers and technicians who run Ingenuity can only bite their nails and wait for the signal that the helicopter has flown and landed.
“I’m sure we’ll all be pretty good,” Josh Ravich, chief engineer of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said to Insider. “Definitely nervous. I mean, after years and years of work, you know, he’s kind of waiting for that little moment to come back.”
Watch NASA fly its Mars helicopter live
Ingenuity is a demonstration designed to test NASA’s rotorcraft technology on another planet. So beyond flying and capturing photos and videos from the air, it will not drive any science. But ingenuity could pave the way for future alien helicopters that would recognize rovers and astronauts, study the surface of Mars or other planets in the air, and fly through canyons and rocks that could be inaccessible to rovers.
The live broadcast of NASA TV, below, will begin Monday at 6:15 a.m. ET, showing the agency’s space flight operations facility while receiving data and possibly images from the Ingenuity flight. There, engineers like Ravich will be looking forward to hearing from the helicopter.
“By its nature, it will have a little more risk than a normal mission,” Ravich said. “There are a lot of things that could go wrong.”
The ingenuity will have already tried to fly about three hours earlier, at 3:30 am ET. You won’t be able to watch the flight in real time – NASA can’t broadcast live from another planet – but videos about and from the flight will probably become available shortly thereafter. The helicopter is set to record the ground below it using two cameras on its belly (one in black and white for navigation and one in color). Meanwhile, perseverance is expected to record the flight from a close-up view.
It is unknown at this time what he will do after leaving the Earth. NASA will be released. Perseverance sent back full video footage of its landing within three days.
A “selfie” of perseverance shows the cameras on the remote sensing mast at the end of the robot’s robotic arm.
NASA / JPL-Caltech
Monday’s test flight was originally scheduled for April 12, but NASA delayed it after a crucial rotation test ended abruptly. This test involved turning the helicopter’s carbon fiber blades at full speed while on the ground. The two pairs of blades must rotate in opposite directions at about 2,500 revolutions per minute – about eight times faster than a passenger helicopter on Earth – to lift the 4-kilogram drone. It is necessary because Martian air has only 1% of the density of the Earth’s atmosphere.
But the rotation test ended when the helicopter failed to transition the flight computer from “pre-flight” mode to “flight” mode. Engineers have since solved the problem by modifying the helicopter’s flight control software. The ingenuity repeated its maximum speed spin test on Friday, and the blades worked as they should during the flight.
This could be the first of 5 flights
NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter, photographed on Mars by the Perseverance rover on April 4.
NASA / JPL-Caltech
If all goes as NASA hopes, Ingenuity’s fifth and final flight will transport the helicopter to more than 300 meters from Martian ground.
“Each of these will probably be, you know, a pretty tense and exciting experience,” Ravich said.
But even if ingenuity completes only this first 10-foot flight, this will be a major achievement.
“It will really be a Wright brothers moment, but on another planet,” MiMi Aung, the helicopter team’s project manager, said in a briefing before the rover landed. “Every step forward will be the first of its kind.”
This post has been updated with new information. It was originally published on Friday, April 9, 2021.