When NASA Mars Rover of perseverance touches the red planet later this month, it will arrive with a lot of precious cargo. Among the new technologies is a drone that will be the first to fly on another planet: the Engine helicopter.
The wit is essentially a test flight: it experiments with flying to another planet for the first time and has limited capabilities. It weighs only about 4 pounds, but its success will definitely pave the way more ambitious exploration of the red planet.
“The Wright brothers demonstrated that a motorized flight into Earth’s atmosphere was possible, using an experimental aircraft,” Håvard Grip, chief pilot of Ingenuity at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), said in a statement. “With ingenuity, we try to do the same for Mars.”
The rover does not carry any scientific instruments to support it Perseverance, and is considered a completely separate mission from the rover. He is currently on Perseverance’s belly, only appearing after the duo played on Mars on February 18th.
NASA / JPL-Caltech
Fly to Mars against Earth
The thin atmosphere of Mars, which is 99% less dense than that of Earth, will make it difficult for wit to get high enough to fly properly. That’s why it’s been designed to be extremely lightweight. It is only 19 inches tall.
He helicopter it has four large sheets of carbon fiber, formed in two rotors spanning about 4 feet and rotating in opposite directions at about 2,400 rpm, significantly faster than typical Earth helicopters.
In addition, Jezero Crater, the Perseverance landing site, is extremely cold: nighttime temperatures drop to less than 130 degrees Fahrenheit. Much of the power of ingenuity will go directly to staying warm instead of flying.
JPL flight controllers will not be able to control the ingenuity while actually flying. Due to significant delays in communication, orders will be shipped before flights and the team will not know how the flight went until it is over. The wit will be able to make its own decisions about how to fly and stay warm.
“This is a technology that will really open up a new mode of exploration for us, just as the rovers did 20 years ago when we flew Sojourner on the first mission to Mars,” said Matt Wallace, deputy director of March 2020 at JPL, he said during a press conference last week.
Perseverance carries more than two dozen cameras and Ingenuity has two of its own. Here on Earth, we will have a front-row view of the ingenuity test flights from the rover’s perspective, as well as the aerial shots from the helicopter itself.
NASA / JPL-Caltech
What’s in a name?
The name Ingenuity was originally sent by Alabama high school student Vaneeza Rupani for the March 2020 rover, which was eventually named Perseverance. But the NASA team thought it would be the perfect name for a helicopter that needed so much creative thought to get off the ground.
“The ingenuity and brilliance of the people who work hard to overcome the challenges of interplanetary travel is what allows us all to experience the wonders of space exploration,” Rupani wrote. “Ingenuity is what allows people to achieve amazing things.”
Twenty-eight thousand students in the United States submitted essays and proposed names for NASA’s new Mars rover. Virginia, seventh grader Suggestion from Alexander Mather, Constancy, was finally chosen.
The ingenuity has yet to pass tests before the flight
The NASA team has a list of milestones for the helicopter to survive before taking off for Mars:
- Survive the launch from Cape Canaveral, which took place on July 30; the trip to Mars; and landing on February 18th
- Deployment safely on the surface from the inside of Perseverance’s belly
- Staying warm autonomously during the harsh Martian nights by means of internal heaters
- It is charged autonomously with a solar powered panel
After all this, Ingenuity will take off for the first time and stand a few feet off the ground for about 20 to 30 seconds before landing. If he makes a successful first flight, the team will attempt up to four more tests within a month, each pushing the distance and altitude limits, like a little bird learning to fly.
“Helicopter ingenuity is a highly rewarding, high-risk effort,” Wallace said. “It’s something we haven’t tried and there will always be some likelihood of a problem occurring. But that’s why we’re doing it; we’ll learn from the problem if it occurs.”
United Launch Alliance
Adding a component of aerial exploration could be crucial for future planetary exploration.
“The Ingeniousness team has done everything to test the helicopter on Earth and we are looking forward to doing our experiment in the real environment on Mars,” said MiMi Aung, Ingeniousness project manager at JPL. “We will learn all the way and it will be the ultimate reward for our team to be able to add another dimension to the way we explore other worlds in the future.”
Helicopters on future missions to Mars could act as robotic explorers, seeing terrain from above that rovers cannot access or as spacecraft carrying scientific instruments. They may even help future astronauts one day explore the red planet.
But before that can happen, perseverance must survive the “seven minutes of terror“which includes its entry, descent and landing on Mars. NASA will broadcast the historic event live on its website on February 18, starting at 2:15 p.m. ET.