The most sophisticated robotic rover to date, NASA’s Perseverance, is currently navigating space en route to its final destination: Mars. With the aim of landing in a danger-laden crater next to an ancient riverbed, researchers hope our SUV-sized robot emissary will help us find fossilized clues of ancient life and collect samples that will eventually be returned to Earth. 2031.
But NASA’s Perseverance rover isn’t the only machine boldly heading for the Red Planet. Hidden under the belly of the rover bound for Mars is a slim hitchhiker named Ingenio
. In a few weeks, it will attempt to become the first plane to take flight in a strange world.
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“This will be a moment for us for the Wright brothers,” says Bob Balaram of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, chief engineer of Ingenuity. “The first flight of an experimental aircraft was on Kitty Hawk. You can see how far we’ve come to Earth from that first step. We hope if we are successful it will be a similar time.
Designing Ingenuity presented many challenges for Balaram and his team. The temperature drops to minus 130 degrees Fahrenheit at Jezero Crater. It is so cold on Mars that only a third of the helicopter’s power can be used to fly; Many other powers are used to keep the helicopter in line during the freezing night of Mars to heat the electronic components of the ship.
But the cold temperatures are just the beginning of the problems a budding Martian aviator would face. Mars’ atmosphere is 99% thinner than that of Earth, with a third of its gravitational pull. To generate sufficient lift, the helicopter has two 4-foot-long carbon fiber blades that spin at around 2,400 rpm on counter-rotating engines, about eight times faster than a standard helicopter’s blades on Earth. Ingenuity is incredibly light in design, weighing just 4 pounds with a fuselage slightly larger than a baseball.
That said, ingenuity has relatively limited capabilities. The solar-powered helicopter is designed to take off, hover no more than a few tens of feet above the surface, maneuver in the thin air of Mars, and land on flat ground. Over the course of 30 Martian days, a team of NASA engineers at home on Earth will test Ingenuity’s ability to fly.
Once Perseverance lands on the rugged surface of Mars, the six-wheeled robotic geologist will set out on his own mission, seeking a suitable location to deploy Ingenuity as soon as possible. “When we say a suitable place, we are looking for a level ground,” adds Balaram. Once the helicopter is separated from the rover, Perseverance will take social distancing to new heights by moving away about 330 feet from Ingenuity to minimize the risk of collision.
Finally, Ingenuity will take off for its maiden flight under the watchful eye of the Perseverance rover and its cameras. Assuming Ingenuity can safely resurface and land again, the helicopter will fly up to four more times. With each attempt, he will try to go a little higher and further.
But Balaram emphasizes that this is a high-risk, high-paying mission. “Basically, we are testing a whole new form of mobility on another planet, which presents a lot of challenges in terms of flight. Success is not guaranteed and we will achieve it with every step: when we land in three weeks, when we are deployed on the surface, when we check and survive the first night without freezing, when we have that first flight under our belt. , all will be important milestones along the way.
Unfortunately, once the trial period is over, Perseverance will say goodbye to ingenuity, having accomplished its mission to prove that planes can operate in other worlds. If all goes well, Balaram says, the data acquired from these tests will help lay the foundation for a bigger and better aircraft, capable of carrying a full payload of scientific instruments to explore the skies of far-away worlds.
And before ingenuity can fly, perseverance must make its landing. Crossed fingers!