The US space agency (NASA) announced on Saturday (04.10.2021) the delay of at least a few days of the first flight to Mars of its mini-helicopter after a possible technical problem during the rotor tests.
The journey of ingenuity, the first controlled and powered flight from another planet, was scheduled for Sunday, but is now on hold until at least April 14.
A high-speed test of the 1.8-kilogram helicopter rotor ended earlier than scheduled on Friday due to an alert for a possible problem.
“The helicopter team is reviewing the telemetry to diagnose and understand the problem,” NASA said in a statement. “Then the test will be rescheduled at full speed.”
NASA said the helicopter was “safe and healthy” and sent information to Earth.
An extremely risky operation
Initially, the plan for Sunday was for Ingeniousness to fly for 30 seconds to take a photo with the Perseverance rover, which landed on Mars on February 18 with the helicopter attached to the bottom.
The space agency considers the unprecedented operation of the helicopter to be extremely risky, but says it could obtain invaluable data on conditions on Mars.
Flight is a real challenge, because the air on Mars is very thin, less than 1% of the pressure of the Earth’s atmosphere. This means that ingenuity must rotate the rotor blades much faster than a helicopter must fly off the Earth.
Five complex flights
After the flight, Ingeniousness will send Perseverance technical data about what it did, and this information will be transmitted to Earth.
This will include a black and white photograph of the Martian surface that ingenuity is programmed to take during the flight.
A day later, once its batteries have been recharged again, the helicopter will transmit another color photo of the Martian horizon, taken with another camera.
If the flight is successful, NASA plans another no more than four days later. The agency plans a total of five flights, each more difficult than the previous ones, during a month. He hopes the helicopter will rise five meters and then move sideways.
The mission will be the equivalent of Mars’ first propulsion flight on Earth, performed by the Wright brothers in 1903 at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. A piece of cloth from that plane was introduced into the Ingeniousness in homage to that deed.
jc (afp, dpa)