NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter is aiming before April 8 for the first attempt at power and controlled flight of an aircraft on another planet.
At a news conference Tuesday, members of the California-based Water Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) explained that there are still a “number of challenges ahead” and that every step of the process is unprecedented.
“As with everything with the helicopter, this kind of deployment had never been done before,” said Farah Alibay, head of integration for Mars Helicopter for the Perseverance rover. “Once we start the deployment there is no going back. 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 hold on for a [Martian day] or more until we have a better idea of what’s going on. “
Before the ingenuity can attempt to fly even into the Martian atmosphere, the 4-pound rotor aircraft must first be deployed.
On March 21, the rover of Perseverance Mars, which brought the wit to the red planet, he dropped his rubble shield which protected the helicopter and is currently en route to the “Airfield” 33 by 33 feet where he will try his naivete first flight.
Once the rover reaches its flight zone, it will take about a week to put the helicopter into operation.
Mars ’helicopter delivery system will rotate and drop the helicopter about 5 inches above the surface. Perseverance then has 25 hours to move away from its “rover observation post.”
The device, which will be autonomous and loaded with its own solar panel, has a one-month window for up to five test flights.
“We will spend several days of commissioning – about a week – where we test our sensors, test our individual mechanism, test the engines to make sure they run well. And, we will be very methodical and event-based as we go. develop this engineering experiment, ”said Bob Balaram, chief engineer of JPL’s Mars helicopter.
“And then we will be at a point where we will take our first flight and then we will make more flights once we have understood and analyzed the whole behavior of that first flight,” he said.
Last week, JPL announced who had chosen a flight zone north of the Perseverance landing site in Jezero Crater.
At the conference, the team of scientists announced that it would name the location in honor of its “college, 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 last projects and Bobby Braun, director of planetary science at JPL, went to say that the engineer was the “guiding force” of his team.
Once the rover is loaded, has survived a cold Martian night, and is ready to attempt flight, Perseverance will receive and transmit flight instructions to the helicopter.
“Several factors will determine the precise time of the flight, including modeling of local wind patterns plus measurements taken by the Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer (MEDA) aboard Perseverance. The device will bring its rotors to 2,537 rpm and, if all the final self-checks look good, they will move away, ”NASA wrote in a press release on Tuesday. “After going up at a speed of about 3 feet per second … the helicopter will be at 10 feet … above the surface for up to 30 seconds. Then the Mars helicopter will go down and back over 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 if its first flight was a success or not.
Using what is provided to them, engineers will understand the best way to proceed.
“Every step we’ve taken since this journey began six years ago has been unfamiliar territory in the history of the aircraft,” Balaram said. “And despite being deployed on the surface it will be a big challenge, to survive that first night only on Mars, without the rover protecting it and keeping it fed, it will be even bigger.”
What could go wrong?
If there is an error or error, the process may take longer. Assuming the ingenuity arrives on the first night, the team will spend the next few Martian days moving the rotor blades, testing the rotor system, and verifying the performance of the inertial unit of measure.
Worries aside, everything makes history.
In recognition of this, a small amount of material covering one of the wings of the The Wright brothers The steering wheel is on board the craft: it is attached 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 Landing on the Moon.
