Until now, human exploration on Mars has been measured by the circular motion of orbits above the planet and the meandering paths of rovers on the ground below. At the beginning of next month, NASA will enter the elusive space between the two realms, with the launch of the Ingenuity box-shaped helicopter.
Equipped with two 2,400 rpm rotors (one stacked on top of the other), solar-powered lithium batteries and four carbon composite legs, Ingeniousness is scheduled to perform the first controlled and controlled test flight of mankind on another planet. Now, NASA’s Ingenuity team has discovered the area where the $ 80 million helicopter will take to the Martian sky: an elongated, 300-foot area in the immediate vicinity of the Perseverance rover, which landed on Mars last month. .
“The Perseverance Rover carries with it the most advanced suite of scientific instruments we have ever sent to Mars,” Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s Division of Planetary Sciences, told a news conference today. In addition to the rover’s research equipment, he brought a special side project: the Mars helicopter.
Like a bat clinging to its parent in the air, Ingeniousness reached the Jezero crater attached to the belly of Perseverance. The helicopter has not yet been deployed, it is still located in the safety of the rover’s power supply. But once they break up, the plan of the boat is short and pleasant: to take off and float, and if the team is lucky, do it several times. Each glide is planned to last between 20 and 30 seconds.
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Although much of Mars is full of happiness, including the expanse of the old white of the lake where Perseverance landed, there would be huge benefits in crossing the planet through the air. NASA scientists hope the helicopter paves the way for more advanced Martian craft in the future and that it can inform flight missions elsewhere, such as the spacecraft’s planned plans. Dragonfly on the moon Titan.
Once ingenuity separates from perseverance, the rover will step out of the area to ensure that the experimental helicopter will not be shaded before the Martian sun rises. (There will be enough power left from his umbilical connection to the rover to last a night on Mars without solar power, so it’s important to have free access to sunlight the next day.) Perseverance will move toward the newly named Van Zyl Pass with the view about 200 meters from the place of release of the helicopter to observe the achievements of the smaller boat. The view is not monumental; about 3 feet above the flight area, but high enough for a good view.
After being tested in simulated Martian atmospheres on Earth (think of a sealed grain silo under vacuum), the helicopter is now scheduled to try the real thing no sooner. than April 8, according to Bob Balaram, the chief engineer for ingenuity. Because it uses components available on the shelf that help the helicopter navigate the thin Martian air and transmit information back to Perseverance, ingenuity is truly a computing genius compared to its previous carriers.
“The special computer we use here for ingenuity is about 150 times faster than that for perseverance,” Balaram told a NASA news conference today. “If you add up all the computers that flew into the solar system and summarize them all, we empower it by two orders of magnitude.”
Despite this, ingenuity is still an interplanetary demonstration, which means that the mini-helicopter has only a short period of operation. It will have a terrestrial moon to test its wings – erm, rotors – and could fly up to five times. The NASA team did not comment on whether subsequent flights could be more ambitious than the first short test.
Not a group to miss an opportunity symbolism, NASA fixed a piece of postage-sized fabric under the helicopter’s solar panel. It’s a cut from one of the Wright brothers’ first controlled flights, which flew to Kitty Hawk almost 120 years ago. The brothers auctioned off the fabric covers to raise funds for future flight attempts, and the buyers of one of these snippets provided it to the Mars 2020 team. once again, in a literal world.