The day has finally arrived! Ingenuity, the small helicopter marked NASA’s Perseverance Rover to Mars, has now made history by reaching the first powered flight of an airplane on another planet.
This story has been updated.
Ingenuity, the Mars Helicopter, is a groundbreaking technology demonstration to test powered, controlled rotor flight on Mars. This is something that was once considered impossible due to Mars’ extremely thin atmosphere. The mission team has now proven that this is possible, and it could lead to new types of exploration on Mars.
Perseverance’s first selfie on the rover, on April 6, 2021, included Vernuf in the picture (also shown enlarged in the insert). Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Scott Sutherland
After some delays, the Mars helicopter performed its first test flight on Monday, April 19 at 03:30 ET.
During this test, Ingenuity rotated its twin rotors to 2500 rpm. It produced enough lifts so that the helicopter could ascend the air to a height of 3 meters above the ground. Ingenuity then soared, in the process turning to perseverance, and lowering itself gently back to the ground.
This still image from the Mastcam-Z video shows how ingenuity floats above the surface. The helicopter’s shadow is visible on the ground below. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech
“We can now say that humans flew with a rotorcraft on another planet!” says Mimi Aung, project manager of the Mars Helicopter Ingenuity at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The data of this flight was transmitted to Earth via Perseverance and the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and arrived shortly after 06:30 ET. The data to confirm the successful test consist of a simple graph that showed the height of the helicopter over time. Images taken by the downward cameras on the helicopter were also sent back to Earth.
However, the best view on this flight was provided by the Perseverance Rover through its high-resolution Mastcam-Z camera. Check out the flight, below:
DUSTY MARS
Mars is a very dusty planet. This was a major concern for the Ingenuity flight crew due to the possibility that the test could kick up a significant amount of dust, which could potentially cause problems with the flight, or obscure their view of it through Eclipse.
During the flight, Perseverance captured high-resolution footage and NASA scientists applied special processing to the images to determine how much dust the ingenuity displaced during the flight. Following is a side-by-side video, which adds both the highly processed view used to detect the dust, and adds a better version of the original footage with the dust movement.
According to NASA: “The view on the left uses motion filtering to indicate where dust was detected during takeoff and landing, and the view on the right is enhanced by motion filtering. Scientists use this image processing to detect dust devils as they pass by Marsrovers. “cut-out” of the helicopter is visible in every side-by-side format; it is an artifact associated with digital processing. “
DELAYS
Originally, Ingenuity’s test flight was scheduled for Sunday, April 11th. In the days before the date, however, the team noticed a problem while testing its systems.
The Mars helicopter, taken on 5 April 2021 by one of Perseverance’s navigation cameras (Navcams). Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech / Scott Sutherland
As the mission team reported in a status update: “During a high-speed rotary test of the rotors on Friday, the command sequence that controls the test was terminated early due to a ‘watchdog’ timer. This occurred while trying to switch the flight computer from “Pre-flight” to “Flight mode. The helicopter is safe and sound and has communicated its full telemetry to Earth.”
Due to this, the first flight was delayed until at least 14 April.
In another update on April 12, they said they had found a way to program a solution to the problem that had occurred. This required the new program to be validated and transferred to Ingenuity, and then the small drone would be reloaded for the new programming to take effect. Since it was expected that it would take some time to complete this process, they delayed the date of the first test flight somewhere during the week of April 19th.
FIRST AIRPORT EXHAUSTERS
So far, it can be said that several missions ‘flew’ through the Martian atmosphere. When robbers and landers first enter the atmosphere from space, they technically fly during the aerobraking phase, although this is more like controlled fall. In the case of Curiosity, its skycrane stage performed a powered flight when it landed the robber on the surface and then pushed away to fall at a safe distance. Perseverance’s skycrane did the same, but it went a step further and performed a real ‘controlled’ flight. As it descends to the surface, the rover takes the ground below and the sky crane responds to what has been captured, guiding its flight path to put the rover down in a safe place.
Yet none of this has done what Ingenuity has now achieved.
This computer simulation shows the ingenuity that flies some distance away from the Perseverance Rover. Credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech
Ingenuity has the first driven, controlled planes flight on another planet. It was the first robot to land on Mars, take off from the surface again and then land safely again.
So, why even test something like this? With a powered rotor flight now a proven concept for Mars, it’s becoming a new facet for missions we’ve not yet explored.
Perhaps in the future, each new rover or landing mission will include a helicopter companion that can quickly explore and explore where its headquarters are located. Or, maybe our Pathfinder-style landers will fill up with swarms of rotorcraft, which will blow out of ‘basecamp’ to quickly explore a wide area in a short amount of time. Or the ‘monster return’ mission planned to follow Perseverance could include helicopters designed to pick up the sample tubes and return to the lander for return to Earth.
When human missions finally arrive to explore Mars, each can also bring along several of these helicopters. This will enable them to select locations around the landing area in detail, to maximize the scientific potential of their visit.
NOT THE IDEAL ENVIRONMENT
Mars does not have the best environment for aircraft flights. It is cold and dusty, and this combination can cause impressive static charge. These conditions can test the electronic hardware of any robot, especially that of a small helicopter drone.
However, the biggest challenge that Ingenuity faced was the atmosphere of the planet. The atmosphere of Mars has about one percent of the surface pressure of the Earth’s atmosphere.
This image taken by the Viking 1 orbit in June 1976 offers a glimpse of the thin, dusty atmosphere of Mars from space. Credit: NASA / Viking 1.
It was a challenge for all missions that ended up on the planet. There is barely enough air for heat shields and parachutes to function properly, so each mission needs something extra beyond these measures. For Pathfinder & Sojourner, Spirit and Opportunity, airbags deployed to their parachutes did what they could, causing the robots to bounce across the surface and eventually roll to a halt. The more massive robbers of curiosity and perseverance need the impressive ‘powered crane’ maneuvers to touch intact and safely.
For Ingenuity, the challenge was to generate enough elevator in the extremely thin atmosphere to really get up from the ground and fly. To do this, it needed specially designed rotors that rotated up to 2,500 rpm – more than three times faster than rotors on earth need to rotate.
Of course, the mission team did not blindly go into this. They tested the ingenuity in a special room at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, known as the Space Simulator. In this vastly sealed room, they recreated the cold, low-pressure atmospheric conditions that Ingenuity would encounter on Mars and then adapted the small helicopter to fly in those conditions.
The question of whether it will really work in the right environment has now been answered! Check back for more updates in the coming days.