So far, human exploration on Mars has been measured in the circular motion of orbits above the planet and the meandering traces of rovers on the ground below. Earlier next month, NASA will enter the dodging space between these two realms, with the launch of the Ingenuity box-shaped helicopter.
Equipped with two 2,400 rpm rotors (one located on top of the other), solar-powered lithium batteries and four carbon-composite legs, the device is planned to carry out the first test flight controlled and powered by humanity on another planet. Now, the NASA team operating Ingenuity has discovered the area where the $ 80 million helicopter will take to the Martian sky: a 300-foot oblong area near the Perseverance rover, which landed on Mars last month. past.
“The Perseverance rover carries with it the most advanced set of scientific instruments we have 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 team, he provided a special side project: the Mars helicopter.
Like a bat clinging to his parents, Ingenuity reached the Jezero crater tied to Perseverance’s belly. The helicopter has not yet been deployed, still locked in the security of the rover’s power supply. But once it splits, the boat’s plan is short and sweet: take off and glide and, if the team is lucky, do it several more times. Each flyer is expected to last 20 to 30 seconds.
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While much of Mars is happily flat, including the stretch of the old lake bed where perseverance landed, there would be huge benefits to traveling the planet by air. NASA scientists hope the helicopter charts a path forward for more advanced Martian vessels in the future and can report flight missions elsewhere, such as the planned voyages of Dragonfly on the moon Titan.
Once the ingenuity separates from the perseverance, the rover will leave the area to make sure the experimental helicopter will not be shaded before the Martian sun rises. (You will only have enough energy left from your umbilical connection to the rover to last a night of Mars without solar energy, so it’s important that you have free access to sunlight the next day). Perseverance will head to the newly named Van Zyl Overlook about 200 feet from the helicopter launch site to observe the achievements of the smaller ship. The view is not monumental; about 3 feet higher than the flight zone, but high enough to have a good view.
After being tested in simulated Martian atmospheres on Earth (think of a vacuum-sealed grain silo), the helicopter is currently scheduled to test the real one not before. that on April 8, according to Bob Balaram, the chief engineer. Because it uses available components that help the helicopter navigate Martian air and transmit information to perseverance, the wit is truly a computational genius compared to its previous carriers.
“The particular computer we are using here at Wit is about 150 times faster than that of Perseverance,” Balaram said at a NASA press conference today. “If you add up all the equipment that has gone through the solar system to the end and summarize it all, we’re going to shrink it by two orders of magnitude.”
Despite this fact, Ingenuity remains an interplanetary demonstration, which means that the mini chopper only has a short period of operation. It will take a terrestrial month to test the wings (wasteland, rotors) and could fly up to five times. The NASA team would not comment on whether subsequent flights could be more ambitious than the first short test.
It is not a group to shun an opportunity for symbolism, NASA held a piece of cloth the size of a postage stamp under the helicopter’s solar panel. It is a cut fabric of one of the Wright brothers’ first controlled flight and engine aircraft, which flew in Kitty Hawk almost 120 years ago. The brothers auctioned off the fabric covers to raise funds for future flight attempts and buyers of one of these fragments have provided it to the Mars 2020 team. It is a very fitting historical arc that the fabric would now have. of finding himself flying once again, to a literal world.