NASA’s Speed Helicopter will attempt to flee the Red Planet early Monday morning, and you will be able to watch live as the NASA team follows this historic test from mission control.
If the four legs of this 1.8 kg (4 lb) small helicopter left the surface of Mars, it would be the first time that NASA – or any other space agency – had successfully conducted a controlled flight on an alien planet. reach. Success will add a whole new dimension to exploring the Red Planet.
You can watch the live stream below, which starts at around 03:30 EDT (12:30 PDT) on Monday 12 April. NASA has not yet said when images or even videos of the flight attempt will be available, but we are hoping for later Monday.
Alternatively, you can use the NASA app, Youtube, en Facebook. For those living in the Western Hemisphere, it may not be the best time to wake up, but NASA will hold a news conference on the same day to discuss the preliminary results at 11:00 EDT (08:00 PDT). .
What is important is that the current schedule is subject to change “as engineers work on deployments, pre-flight controls and vehicle positioning of perseverance and ingenuity,” according to to NASA. Schedule updates can be monitored on the helicopter’s Watch Online web page.
The team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory will also assess the wind speed at the Octavia Butler landing site and the amount of power Ingenuity has available for its flight, as Ingenuity project manager MiMi Aung told reporters on Friday. Amelia Quon, chamber engineer, said the helicopter had been tested over a wide range of possible wind conditions, but there was no perfect way to mimic the conditions on Mars.
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During tests on Earth, a prototype was exposed to winds blowing between 33 and 36 feet per second (10 to 11 meters per second), which should be stronger than expected in Jezero Crater, as Quon explained during Friday’s press conference. .
The Perseverance Rover, after being coupled to the helicopter, will send the flight test results to a runway, which in turn will transmit the data to mission controllers on earth. During the press conference, Tim Canham, the leader of Ingenuity at JPL, said that we should expect data of 40 seconds as this is the expected duration of the first test flight.
Ingenuity is equipped with a downward camera that will take photos during the flight, Canham said. The team expects to initially receive grainy black-and-white images, followed by high-resolution images in the coming days. Ingenuity’s camera, which flashed 30 times per second, will, in addition to the flight chronicle, also serve as a kind of altimeter and help mission planners locate the helper’s landing site, he added.
The Perseverance rover will try to take pictures of Ingenuity’s test flight, which it will do with its Mastcam-Z camera. Elsa Jensen, general manager of the Mastcam Z-uplink operation, said her team had been training for the test flight, but warned that the photos would not be good as there has never been such a attempt and that there is likely to be ‘surprises’ is. , ”As she explained on Friday. Interestingly, Canham said that Perseverance’s microphones could be used to capture the sounds of Ingenuity during subsequent tests.
Ingenuity was deployed to the surface this past weekend and now stands on its four legs. The helicopter was packed away at the bottom of the Rover for the trip to Mars, but the machine now survives on its own and successfully recharges its batteries through its solar panels and communicates according to its six-wheel counterpart, according to Aung. The most important milestones were reached this week, as the four helicopters of the helicopters were rolled up and tested at speeds of 50 rpm and 2,400 rpm.
The two sets of blades are counter-rotating, and they are fine-tuned to maximize airflow into the thin air. Ingenuity’s rotors are not something you’ll get off the shelf, Aung said. Each superlight blade weighs about 35 grams and consists of a foam core with a carbon fiber coating. The design is meant to ensure stiffness, strength and lightness, she added. During the first flight, the rotors of Ingenuity will rotate at a furious speed of 2,537 rpm. The high rotational speed is due to the Martian atmosphere, which is only 1% of the Earth.
Aung said this project would not be possible 10 or 15 years ago, engineers, as now, have the technology to turn the blades at such high speeds, to harness the autonomous and lightning-fast microcontrollers of the rotor blades during flight, and to design a vehicle that can survive the penalties conditions on Mars.
Regardless of what happens during the flight, “we learn, whether it is success or failure,” Aung said. She pointed to the grim possibility that Ingenuity would tip over during the landing. Bbecause the helicopter has no way to correct itself, the project would effectively put an end to the project. The technology demo is about “adding the air dimension” to NASA’s toolkit to explore Mars, Aung said. And as Canham pointed out, photos of the test would be nice, of course, but the primary purpose of the mission is to gather the flight data.
Would the flight go well and Ingenuity lands on all four feet, NASA will continue to test the helicopter over the course of 30 sols, or Mars days.