NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter makes an inaugural flight to Mars at a “Wright Brothers moment”

After overcoming one previous software problem, NASA’s $ 80 million intelligence helicopter spun its carbon-composite rotors and retreated from the dusty surface of Mars early Monday to become the first aircraft to fly in a another planet, a “Wright brothers moment” that could pave the way for future interplanetary planes.

Tilting the balance to just 4 pounds (1.5 pounds) at the lower gravity of Mars, the 4-foot-long Ingenuity counter-rotating rotors, which rotated at more than 2,500 rpm, were ordered to change their step, “spicy” deeper into the fine atmosphere. for a displacement from the ground of Crater Lake around 3:30 am EDT.

With the Rover of perseverance looking from a safety distance, the craft climbed 10 feet straight up, glided, turned in place, and then landed to complete a test flight of about 40 seconds.

That was more than enough to do space history.

“Now we can say that humans have piloted a rotary engine on another planet!” an exalted MiMi Aung, the Ingenuity project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told his team socially distanced. “We’ve been talking so long about our Wright brothers’ time on Mars, and here it is.

“We don’t know from history what Orville and Wilbur did after their first successful flight. I imagine the two brothers hugged. Well, I’m hugging you pretty much right now … We flew to Mars and together we have the time of our Wright brothers “.

The data confirming the historic flight arrived on Earth three hours after the flight, relayed through NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Once on the road, the data took nearly 16 minutes to cross the 178 million-mile gulf between Mars and Earth.

Telemetry began appearing on computer screens at JPL shortly after 6:30 a.m. EDT. First, the team confirmed that the data had been successfully retrieved. Then, looking intently at his screen, JPL’s “pilot”, Håvard Grip, announced the results, confirming that the ingenuity “spun, took off, went up, hovered, went down, landed, touched and turned down.”

“Altimetric data confirms that Ingenuity has made the first flight of a powered airplane on another planet!” he said as engineers erupted in applause and applause.

Moments later, the initial images were shown, including a small video recorded by Perseverance showing the small helicopter getting up, gliding and landing. A sharp black-and-white still image, taken by a camera aboard Ingenuity, showed the shadow of the helicopter on the surface of Mars, its rotors clearly defined.

As each image appeared on a screen at the front of the control room, the team of engineers applauded and applauded with obvious relief.

The short initial flight of ascent and descent of the ingenuity might seem trivial given the performance of economic drones on Earth. But flying in an atmosphere mostly of carbon dioxide only 1% thick as that of Earth on a planet so far away is not possible direct human control and where the temperature drops to more than 100 degrees below zero every night is a important technological challenge.

Based on the results of the Ingenuity mission, more sophisticated drones can be sent to Mars and any other part of the solar system to transport cameras and scientific instruments to places that are not accessible to rovers or, finally, to astronauts. .

The ingenuity was taken to Mars locked in the belly of the Perseverance rover, which landed in Jezero crater on Feb. 18, the rover dropped the helicopter to the surface and retreated to observe the first of up to five short test flights.

Equipped with two cameras, the helicopter does not carry any scientific instruments. It was added to the Perseverance mission solely to determine the viability of a motor flight in the thin atmosphere of the red planet.

Starting the Ingenuity flight problem

The initial test flight was initially scheduled for April 11th. But two days earlier, the helicopter’s flight software interrupted a rotor rotation test when it was unable to switch to flight mode as planned.

JPL engineers reviewed the telemetry and found two solutions. One required linking some additional commands to the control software, an approach that is expected to work approximately 85% of the time.

The other option was to replace the flight software with a modified version that has been linked and stored aboard Perseverance. This would completely eliminate the problem, but it would take a few more days to implement and introduce at least one slight element of additional risk.

After a detailed analysis, the helicopter team opted for the first option.

“This solution is the least detrimental to a helicopter that, until we identified the problem (script synchronization), has behaved as we expected,” Aung said earlier in a blog post. “It’s the simplest, because we don’t have to change its settings.”

Up to four more test flights are planned over the next few days, pushing the helicopter to slightly higher altitudes and farther crossings to make its compact systems within reach.

After that, Perseverance will move on to its main scientific mission, leaving the helicopter behind as the rover begins to look for signs of past microbial life in ancient lake deposits on the ground of Jezero Crater.