So far, human exploration on Mars has been measured in the circular motion of orbits above the planet and the meandering paths of rovers on the ground below. Early next month, NASA will enter the elusive space between these two realms with the launch of the box-shaped helicopter Ingenuity.
Equipped with two 2,400rpm rotors (one placed on top of the other), solar-powered lithium batteries and four carbon composite legs, Ingenuity is slated to conduct humanity’s first powered and controlled test flight on another planet. Now, Ingenuity’s NASA team has discovered the area in which the $ 80 million helicopter will fly into the skies of Mars: an elongated 90-meter zone in the immediate vicinity of the Perseverance rover, which landed on Mars last month.
“The Perseverance rover has the most advanced array of scientific instruments we’ve ever sent to Mars,” Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division, said at a news conference today. In addition to the rover’s research equipment, it entailed a special side project: the Mars helicopter.
Like a baby bat clinging to its parent in the air, Ingenuity arrived in Jezero Crater tied to Perseverance’s belly. The helicopter has yet to be deployed, still nestled in the security of the rover’s power supply. But once it’s split off, the craft’s plan is short and sweet: take off and float, and if the team is lucky, do that a few more times. Each hover takes 20 to 30 seconds.
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While much of Mars is blissfully flat, including the stretch of old lake bed where Perseverance landed, traversing the planet through the sky would have tremendous benefits. NASA scientists hope the helicopter will set a path forward for more advanced Martian craft in the future and that it can inform flight missions elsewhere, such as the planned trials of Dragonfly on the moon Titan
Once Ingenuity breaks away from Perseverance, the rover will run out of the area to make sure the experimental helicopter doesn’t get shaded before dawn on Mars. (It will only have enough power left from its umbilical cord-like connection to the rover to last one Mars night without solar power, so it’s important it has free access to sunlight the next day.) Perseverance will go to the newly named Van . Zyl Overlook about 60 meters from the helicopter’s drop site to observe the performance of the smaller craft. The view is not monumental; about 90 cm higher than the flight zone, but high enough for good visibility.
After being tested in simulated Martian atmospheres on Earth (think vacuum-sealed grain silo), the helicopter is currently scheduled not to attempt the real thing sooner then April 8, according to Bob Balaram, the chief engineer for Ingenuity. Using ready-made components that help the helicopter navigate the thin air of Mars and transfer information to Perseverance, Ingenuity is truly a computational genius compared to its predecessors.
“The particular computer we use here on Ingenuity is about 150 times faster than the one on Perseverance,” Balaram said at a NASA news conference today. “If you add up all the computers that flew all the way back into the solar system and you sum it all up, we’re going to reduce it by two orders of magnitude.”
Despite this, Ingenuity is still an interplanetary demo, which means that the mini chopper only has a short operating period. It has an Earth month to test its wings – er, rotors – and can fly up to five times. The NASA team won’t say whether the later flights might be more ambitious than the first, short test.
Not a group to avoid an opportunity for symbolismNASA attached a piece of cloth the size of a postage stamp under the helicopter’s solar panel. It is cut from fabric from one of the Wright Brothers’ first powered controlled flight aircraft, which flew on Kitty Hawk nearly 120 years ago. The brothers auctioned off sheaths of the fabric to get money for future flight attempts, and buyers of one of those fragments delivered it to the Mars 2020 team. It is an extremely fitting storyline that the curtain must now fly again, a literal world away.