GODMOTHER Ingenuity helicopter will attempt to take flight to the Red Planet early Monday morning and you will be able to watch live how the NASA team follows this historic test from mission control.
If the four legs of this small 1.8 kg helicopter leave the Martian surface, it will be the first time that NASA – or any other space agency – will successfully perform electrically controlled flight on an alien planet. Success would introduce a whole new dimension to the exploration of the Red Planet.
You can watch the live stream below starting at approximately 3:30 am EDT (12:30 am PDT) on Monday, April 12th. NASA has not yet said when images or even videos of the flight test will be available, but we are hoping later Monday.
Alternatively, you can watch on NASA application, YouTube, and Facebook. For those living in the Western Hemisphere, this is certainly not the best time to wake up, but NASA will hold a news briefing to discuss the preliminary results of the flight at 11:00 EDT (8:00 PDT) in the same day. .
It is important to note that the current schedule may be modified “as engineers work on implementations, flight checks and vehicle positioning of both perseverance and ingenuity.” according NASA. Schedule updates can be monitored on the helicopter’s Watch Online Web page.
The team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory will also assess the wind speed at the Octavia Butler landing site and the amount of energy available for ingenuity for its flight, MiMi Aung, Ingenuity project manager, told reporters on Friday. Amelia Quon, an engineering test engineer, said the helicopter was tested in a wide range of possible wind conditions, but there was no perfect way to simulate conditions on Mars.
G / O Media may receive a commission
During Earth tests, a prototype was exposed to winds blowing between 10 and 11 meters per second, which should be stronger than expected inside Jezero Crater, as Quon explained at the press conference. Friday.
The Perseverance rover, after connecting with the helicopter, will transmit the results of the flight tests to an orbiter, which, in turn, will retransmit the data to the mission controllers on Earth. During the press conference, Tim Canham, leader in JPL’s ingenuity operations, said we should expect 40 seconds of data, as this is the expected duration of the inaugural test flight.
The ingenuity is equipped with a camera facing down, which will take pictures during the flight, Canham said. The team expects to receive granular black-and-white images at the beginning, followed by high-resolution images in the coming days. Capturing images 30 times per second, Ingenuity’s camera, in addition to chronicling the flight, will also serve as a kind of altimeter and help mission planners locate the helicopter’s landing site, he added.
The Perseverance Rover will try to capture images of Ingenuity’s test flight, which it will do with its Mastcam-Z camera. Elsa Jensen, the leader of Mastcam-Z’s uplink operations, said her team practiced the test flight, but warned that the images might not be great, as she had never tried anything like it before. that there will be “surprises,” as she explained on Friday. Interestingly, Canham said that Perseverance microphones could be used to capture the sounds of in-flight ingenuity during subsequent tests.
The ingenuity was launched last weekend and now stands on all fours. The helicopter had been packed on the underside of the rover for the road to Mars, but the car survives on its own, successfully recharging its batteries using solar panels and communicating with its six-wheeled partner, according to Aung. Major milestones were reached this week as the four-bladed rotor helicopters were deployed and tested at speeds of 50 rpm and 2,400 rpm.
The two sets of blades are counter-rotating and have been carefully adjusted to maximize lift in thin Martian air. The rotors of ingenuity are not something you would “get off the shelf,” Aung said. Each super-lightweight blade weighs around 35 grams and consists of a foam core with a carbon fiber coating. The design is meant to provide rigidity, strength and lightness, she added. During the inaugural flight, the Ingenuity rotors will rotate at a frantic speed of 2,537 rpm. The high rate of rotation is related to the Martian atmosphere, which represents only 1% of that of the Earth.
Aung said this project would not have been possible 10 or Fifteen years ago, as only now, engineers have the technology to rotate the blades at such high speeds, to use the autonomous and lightning-fast microcontrols of the rotor blades in flight, and to design a vehicle capable of surviving harsh conditions on Mars.
No matter what happens during the flight, “we learn, whether success or failure,” Aung said. She showed the gloomy possibility of overturning her ingenuity during the landing. BAs the helicopter has no way to go, such a development would effectively end the project. The technology demo is about “adding aerial dimension” to NASA’s Mars exploration toolkit, Aung said. And, as Canham pointed out, the test photos will obviously be beautiful, but the main goal of the mission is to get the flight data.
If the flight goes well and ingenuity lands on all fours, NASA will continue to test the helicopter during 30 solos, or Martian days.