NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter is targeting the first-ever attempt at power and controlled flight of an airplane on another planet no earlier than April 8.
At a press conference Tuesday, members of the California-based Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) explained that there are still “some challenges ahead” and that every step in the process is unprecedented.
“As with everything with the helicopter, this type of deployment has never been done before,” said Farah Alibay, leader of Mars Helicopter integration for the Perseverance rover. “Once we have started the bet, there is no going back. All activities are closely aligned, irreversible and interdependent. If there’s even an indication that something isn’t going as expected, we can decide to have one [Martian day] or more until we have a better idea of what’s going on. “
Before Ingenuity can even attempt to fly in the atmosphere of Mars, the 4-pound rotorcraft must first be deployed.
On March 21, the Mars rover Perseverance – which carried Ingenuity to the red planet – dropped his debris shield that protected the helicopter and is currently on its way to the 33 by 33 feet “airport” where Ingenuity will try her first flight
Once the rover reaches its flight zone, it will take about a week for the helicopter to get started.
The Mars Helicopter Delivery System will spin and release the helicopter about 6 inches above the surface. Perseverance will then have 25 hours to get away to its “rover observation site”.
Ingenuity – which will be autonomous and charged by its own solar panel – has a one-month period for up to five test flights.
“We will go through several commissioning days – about a week – where we test our sensors, we test our solo mechanism, we test the motors to make sure they are running properly. And we will be very methodical and event-oriented as this engineering experiment unfolds, ”said Bob Balaram, Mars Helicopter chief engineer at JPL.
“And then we will be at a point where we will take our first flight and then we will gradually take more flights once we understand and analyze all the behavior of that first flight,” he said.
Last week, JPL announced that it had chosen a flight zone just north of the Perseverance landing site in Jezero Crater.
During the conference, the team of scientists announced that they would name the site in honor of their “colleague, mentor and leader,” Jakob van Zyl.
Van Zyl died of a heart attack in August last year and joined JPL in 1986. Ingenuity was one of his latest projects, and Bobby Braun – JPL’s director for planetary science – said the engineer was the “guiding force” for their team.
Once the rover is charged, survived a freezing Mars night and is ready to attempt flight, Perseverance will receive flight instructions and relay them to the helicopter.
“Several factors will determine the precise time for flight, including modeling of local wind patterns plus measurements performed by the Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer (MEDA) onboard Perseverance. Ingenuity will spin its rotors to 2,537 rpm and, if all final self-checks look good, take off, ”NASA wrote in a press release on Tuesday. “After climbing at a speed of about 3 feet per second… the helicopter will hover at 10 feet… above the surface for up to 30 seconds. Then the Mars helicopter will descend and hit the surface of Mars again. “
Several hours later, Perseverance will relay data and possibly images and video from its cameras to the JPL team to determine whether their maiden flight was a success.
Based on what is offered to them, the engineers will then understand how best to proceed.
“Every step we’ve taken since this journey began six years ago has been uncharted territory in aircraft history,” Balaram said. “And while it will be a major challenge to be deployed to the surface, it will be even more challenging to survive that first night on Mars alone, without the rover protecting it and keeping it powered.”
What can go wrong?
If an error has occurred, the process may take longer. Assuming Ingenuity gets through the first night, the team will be moving rotor blades back and forth on Mars for the next few days, testing the rotor system, and verifying the performance of the inertial measurement unit.
Worries aside, it all makes history.
In recognition of this, a small amount of material covering one of the wings of the Wright brothers’ Flyer is on board Ingenuity – taped under the helicopter’s solar panel with insulating tape.
Interestingly, during the July 1969 moon landing, the NASA crew of Apollo 11 flew another piece of the material and a splinter of wood from the Wright Flyer.
