The US space agency (NASA) announced on Saturday (04.10.2021) the delay of the first Mars flight of its mini-helicopter by at least a few days after the appearance of a possible technical problem during the rotor tests.
Ingenuity’s voyage, the first controlled and powered flight on another planet, was scheduled for Sunday, but has now been suspended until at least April 14.
A high-speed test of the 1.8 kilogram helicopter rotors ended earlier than planned on Friday due to a warning of a potential problem.
“The helicopter team is reviewing telemetry to diagnose and understand the problem,” NASA said in a statement. “Then the test is rescheduled at full speed.”
NASA noted that the helicopter is “safe and sound” and has returned information to Earth.
A very risky operation
Initially, for Sunday, the plan was for Ingenuity to fly 30 seconds to capture a photo of the Perseverance rover, which landed on Mars on Feb. 18 with the helicopter at the bottom.
The space agency considers the unprecedented helicopter operation to be very risky, but says it could obtain invaluable data on Martian conditions.
Flying is a real challenge because the air on Mars is very thin, less than 1% of the pressure of Earth’s atmosphere. This means that Ingenuity has to spin its rotor blades much faster than a helicopter on Earth needs to fly.
Five complex flights
After the flight, Ingenuity sends technical data from Perseverance on what it did, and that information is relayed to Earth.
This includes a black and white photo of the surface of Mars that Ingenuity has been programmed to take on the fly.
A day later, when the batteries are recharged, the helicopter sends another photo, in color, of the horizon of Mars, taken with a different camera.
If the flight is successful, NASA will not schedule another flight more than four days later. The agency is projecting a total of five flights, each more difficult than the last, over the course of a month. He hopes to lift the helicopter five meters and then move it laterally.
The mission will be the Mars equivalent of the first powered flight on Earth, conducted by the Wright brothers in 1903 in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. A piece of cloth from that plane was introduced to Ingenuity as a tribute to that achievement.
jc (afp, dpa)