NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter will embark on the first flight ever into another world at 03:30 ET on Monday. The two-blade rotor craft will attempt to rise 10 feet above the ground and soar in place for 30 seconds while cameras on NASA’s Perseverance Rover record the historic attempt at a distance.
The four-pound Ingenuity copter landed on Mars on February 18, attached to the lower abdomen of Perseverance, NASA’s latest Mars rover, whose main mission is to search for signs of ancient Martian life. Perseverance set aside time to witness Ingenuity’s flight effort and report the results back to Earth. Ingenuity’s Monday flight test is the first of five scheduled within a 31-day window that began last week. If all goes well, engineers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California will begin planning for the next four, which can see the spacecraft soar higher and travel further, depending on the results of the first attempt.
JPL engineers tried to set expectations for the test flight at recent press conferences: “It’s really difficult,” said Elsa Jensen, a clue for one of the cameras on board Perseverance that will be aimed at Ingenuity. Tests have gone well over the past week, Jansen added. “But we know there will be surprises.”
How to watch
If the flight takes off on Monday as planned, NASA will be presented live on YouTube, its website, at around 06:15 ET on Monday. Twitter, Facebook and Twitch.
Due to the long delay of data between Mars and Earth, we will not see any live video of the flight attempt – it will probably take a few days to get the recordings. Instead, NASA’s live streams will show how engineers are gradually analyzing data from Mars to confirm whether Ingenuity survived its attempt. Did it fly as expected, or was it swept away by a gust of wind? Did a stranger steal it? We will know as soon as engineers find out.
Tune in early Monday to see how the historic flight is going.
What happens next
Ingenuity’s power supply will be depleted during the landing, and therefore the data must be sent to Perseverance in the most efficient way. The landing data dump will contain some low-resolution black-and-white images magnified by the downward navigation camera under the body of the tissue box.
On Monday, engineers will get other images taken by two cameras on Perseverance – Navcam and Mastcam-Z – with much higher resolution.
The images from Ingenuity, along with summary data, will send radio signals to a so-called Mars base station on the body of Perseverance, which will transmit the signals to a satellite orbiting Mars, which will then transmit the data through NASA’s Deep Space Network. will shoot. all the way back to earth. Ingenuity goes into sleep mode and recharges the batteries for the rest of the day using the small solar panel above the small rotor wings.
On the next Mars day, or sol, engineers Ingenuity will wake up again and retrieve the first 13-megapixel color images taken by its other horizon camera. More flight data will be sent the next day – ‘this is a prize for this project’, said Tim Canham, head of Ingenuity.
“This is definitely a high-risk experiment with a high reward,” MiMi Aung, Ingenuity project manager at NASA JPL, told a news conference on Friday. Based on several hours of tests, simulations and Mars weather analyzes, Aung said “confidence is high” among the engineering team.
Ingenuity’s four-foot-long carbon fiber blades were successfully unlocked last week after planting its feet on the surface, allowing engineers to do a short turn test at 50 rpm. For the actual flight of the craft, the blades will rotate as fast as 2400 rpm – fast enough to amplify the ultra-thin atmosphere of Mars.
How Ingenuity performs the first flight test will determine the parameters of the upcoming flight tests. Aung said the helicopter’s “lifespan will be determined by how well it lands,” suggesting that engineers will be able to perform more flight tests within the 31-day window if things are successful. After that window, however, it is likely that Ingenuity will retire.