NASA is almost ready to embark on the first flight on another planet. The space agency’s small helicopter, called Ingenuity, was laid down in a flat area on Mars, and it went through a series of final tests before trying to lift the thin Mars air.
Ingenuity’s first flight was originally scheduled for April 11, but the mission was hit during a pre-flight test. While trying to rotate the helicopter’s rotors at full speed without leaving the ground, Ingenuity’s on-board computer shut down the test early. NASA is evaluating the data to find out what happened, but says the helicopter is safe and communicating with Earth. Assuming everything goes to check, the team will try again on April 14 for a first flight.
Flying on Mars is incredibly challenging because of the planet’s sharp atmosphere, which is equivalent to an altitude of about 100,000 feet on Earth – much higher than even the most capable helicopters can fly. The highest helicopter flight in history took place in 1972 when French pilot Jean Boulet flew to 40,820 feet at an air base northwest of Marseille.
During its first flight, Ingenuity will rise to about 10 feet, soar and turn slightly and then descend again. The journey will only take 30 seconds, but if successful, Ingenuity will offer new opportunities to explore other worlds, says MiMi Aung, Ingenuity Project Manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
‘JPL, right? We dare powerful things, ”says Aung, referring to the official motto of the NASA laboratory.
NASA hopes the 19-inch-high helicopter will pave the way for larger rotorcraft on Mars so scientists can study the red planet from a new perspective. Spacecraft orbiting Mars give a global idea of the structure and geological features of the planet, while landers and wanderers on the surface take a closer look at the minerals and rock layers that contain clues about the planet’s history.
Helicopters on Mars could study many craters, gorges, and mountains in much more detail than orbits, says Matt Shindell, a curator of planetary science and exploration at the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum (NASM). They can also reach places like gorge walls or volcanic slopes that a rover would never be able to visit.
“What a helicopter would possibly do is to bridge the gap between the orbit perspective and the ground perspective, where we can now get a little more of a sense of Mars in the region,” says Shindell.
A future flying machine could also be used as “a reconnaissance for transverse missions, to overlook a horizon to plan where to drive”, adds Steve Jurczyk, acting administrator of NASA. “Ultimately, for human missions to Mars, it could be an explorer for the astronauts.”
Where air is thin and nights are cold
NASA’s Perseverance Rover brought Ingenuity to the surface after it successfully landed on Mars on 18 February. The Rover now serves as a communications relay for the helicopter’s test flight.
The flight attempt is risky because the thin air of Mars makes it much more difficult to use rotor blades, such as those on a helicopter, to achieve controlled flights. If something goes wrong – a sensor is functioning or an unexpectedly strong gust of wind hits the ingenuity – the rig could fall to the ground.
Some early ideas for a Mars helicopter were studied in the 1990s, but it took several more decades before the required technology to fly a prototype into a vacuum chamber on Earth. Batteries had to become more efficient, computers had to become smaller and lightweight composites had to be developed for the helicopter rotors.
Ingenuity will make the rotors four feet wide rotate to an insane speed of about 2500 rotations per minute. It has to control its rotors automatically quickly to stay stable in the air, with a small computer similar to the electronics of a smartphone, as well as technology developed for self-driving cars.
Between flights, the small helicopter must be able to cope with night temperatures dropping as low as -130 ° F. A small solar panel specially tuned to the amount of sunlight available on Mars feeds batteries that power the helicopter’s cars and drives a heater to keep the craft warm at night.
When they are ready to try again, the team plans to fly Ingenuity around midnight, local Mars time. If you fly in the middle of the afternoon, the solar panel of the helicopter can charge its batteries before and after the flight, so that the batteries still have juice to make the heater work before Ingenuity has to survive another icy night.
NASA will also monitor gusts of wind with a tool on the Perseverance Rover to determine the best time to fly.
“Ingenuity was tested in simulated winds using computer models as well as a large ‘wind wall’ that the team built in one of our test rooms at JPL,” Ingenuity chief engineer Bob Balaram wrote in a status update before the first flight . “However, we can not test the whole range of wind conditions that you can experience on Mars.”
As a sign of the historic nature of the flight, Ingenuity carries a piece of material from the postage stamp of the original Wright Flyer, which Orville Wright transported on the first powered flight of a heavier-than-air aircraft in 1903. The flight over the hills of Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, lasted only 12 seconds.
“The Wright brothers are my motivation,” says JPL’s Aung. Before their flight, “many people had partial tests, partial success, you know, theoretical predictions, analytical predictions, some even had philosophical predictions” about how to fly an airplane. “But at some point,” says Aung, “you just have to have the gut.”