All there is to know about NASA’s Creativity Mars helicopter

To NASA Mars Rover Tenacity The red planet will hit later this month and will arrive with a lot of valuable merchandise. One of the completely new technologies is a drone that will be the first to fly to another planet: Helicopter power.

Cleverness is actually a test flight – he tries to fly on another planet for the first time, and it has limited capabilities. It only weighs about 4 pounds, but its success will undoubtedly lead the way More ambitious exploration The red planet.

“The Wright Brothers showed that powered flight in the Earth’s atmosphere was possible using an experimental aircraft,” said Havard Gharib, chief engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. statement. “We try to do the same with Mars, with creativity.”

The rover doesn’t have the scientific resources to support that determinationAnd it is a completely separate job from thief. He’s currently impatient with perseverance, only to show up after the duo touched Mars on February 18th.

Flying on Mars versus Earth

Mars’ thin atmosphere, which is 99% less dense than Earth’s, will make it difficult for creativity to achieve sufficient lift force to properly fly. That’s why it was designed to be very light. It measures only 19 inches in length.

from helicopter It has four large carbon-fiber blades formed into two rotors about four feet long that rotate in opposite directions at around 2,400 rpm – much faster than a typical land-based helicopter.

Additionally, Jezero Crater, the permanent landing site, is extremely cold – temperatures drop to -130 degrees Fahrenheit at night. Much of the creative power goes directly to heating rather than flying.

JPL’s flight controllers can’t really control creativity in flight. Due to major communications delays, flight requests are shipped in advance and the team won’t know how the flight went until it’s over. Creativity will be able to make its own decisions about how to fly and stay warm.

“This is a technology that will really open up a new way of exploration, just as rovers did 20 years ago when we flew Sojourner on our first mission to Mars,” said Matt Wallace, deputy director of the March 2020 project at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Last week’s press conference.

Perseverance has over twenty cameras and Ingenuity has two of its own. Here on Earth, we have a front row display of Ingenuity test flights from rover perspective, as well as aerial footage from the helicopter itself.

what’s in a name?

The name Ingenuity was originally introduced by Alabama High School student Vaneeza Rupani for the Mars 2020 rover, which was eventually named determination. But the NASA team thought it would be the perfect name for a helicopter that would require a lot of creative thinking to take off from Earth.

“It is the ingenuity and genius of people who work hard to overcome the challenges of interplanetary travel that allow us all to experience the wonders of space exploration,” Roubani wrote. “Creativity is what enables people to achieve great things.”

Twenty-eight thousand students from all over the United States submitted articles and suggested names for the last NASA spacecraft, Mars. Virginia is in the seventh grade Alexander Mather’s proposal, Persevere, he was finally chosen.

Agility must pass pre-flight tests

The NASA team has a list of the landmarks the helicopter should stay on before taking off on Mars:

• Survival Departure from Cape CanaveralIt happened on July 30th. The flight to Mars and landing on February 18th
• It spreads securely over the surface of the firmness belly
• She keeps herself warm on harsh evenings with built-in heaters
• It charges itself independently with a solar panel

After all, Ingenuity will take off and float just a few feet off the ground for about 20 to 30 seconds before landing. If the team makes a successful first flight, it will attempt up to four additional tests within a month-long time frame, each of them progressively pushing the limits of distance and altitude, like a little bird learning to fly.

“Building a helicopter is a big risk and a high reward,” Wallace said. “It’s something we haven’t tried and there will always be a chance for a problem to arise. But that’s why we do it – we’ll learn from the problem if it does.”

Adding an aerial reconnaissance element can be critical here Explore the planets of the future.

“The creativity team has gone to great lengths to test the helicopter on Earth, and we look forward to unleashing our experience in a real environment on Mars,” said Mi Ong, Innovation Project Manager at JPL. “We will learn along the way, and the ultimate reward for our team will be that in the future we can add a new dimension to the way we explore other worlds.”

Helicopters on future Mars missions could act as robotic explorers viewing terrain from above that rovers cannot reach, or as spacecraft equipped with scientific instruments. Perhaps one day they could help future astronauts explore the red planet.

But before that happens, the persistence must continue. “Seven minutes of horrorThis includes its entry, landing, and landing on Mars. NASA The Historic Event will be broadcast live on their website on February 18th at 2:15 PM ET.