The US space agency (NASA) announced on Saturday (2021.04.10) the delay for at least several days of the first flight to Mars of its mini helicopter after the appearance of a possible technical problem during testing of the rotors.
The Ingenuity trip, the first controlled and motorized flight to another planet, was scheduled for Sunday, but is now on hold until at least April 14th.
A high-speed test of the 1.8-kilogram helicopter rotors ended on Friday earlier than expected due to an alert of a potential problem.
“The helicopter team is reviewing telemetry to diagnose and understand the problem,” NASA said in a statement. “The test will then be rescheduled at full speed.”
NASA noted that the helicopter is “safe and healthy” and has sent information to Earth.
A highly risky operation
Initially, the plan for Sunday was for Ingenuity to fly for 30 seconds to take a picture of the Perseverance rover, which landed on Mars on February 18 with the helicopter connected to its bottom.
The space agency considers the helicopter’s unprecedented operation to be highly risky, but says it could obtain invaluable data on conditions prevailing 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 can rotate its rotor blades much faster than it needs a helicopter on Earth to fly.
Five complex flights
After the flight, Ingenuity will send Perseverance technical data on what it has done, and this information will be transmitted to Earth.
This will include a black and white photo of the Martian surface that Ingenuity is programmed to take while flying.
A day later, once their batteries have been recharged again, the helicopter will transmit another photo, in color, of the Martian horizon, taken with a different 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 one, in the course of a month. He hopes to get the helicopter to rise five feet and then move sideways.
The mission will be the Mars equivalent of the first propelled flight to Earth, performed by the Wright brothers in 1903 in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. A piece of cloth from this aircraft was introduced into Ingenuity in honor of this feat.
jc (afp, dpa)