Unmanned Flight on Mars: Ingenuity Mars Helicopter to Take Off
/NASA successfully landed its Perseverance rover on Mars on February 18. Now, the team is preparing to launch the 4 pound Ingenuity rotorcraft for test flights on a patch of the red planet.
Ingenuity is still attached to the belly of the Perseverance rover, but the guitar case-shaped graphite composite debris shield that protected it during landing was released on March 21. (pictured, below left)
The rover, with Ingenuity on board, is in transit to an airfield space where Ingenuity will attempt to fly.
From Nasa
Once deployed, Ingenuity will have 30 Martian days, or sols, (31 Earth days) to conduct its test flight campaign. Flying in a controlled manner on Mars is far more difficult than flying on Earth. The Red Planet has significant gravity (about one-third that of Earth’s) but its atmosphere is just 1% as dense as Earth’s at the surface.
“Ingenuity is a technology demonstration that aims to be the first powered flight on another world and, if successful, could further expand our horizons and broaden the scope of what is possible with Mars exploration,” said Lori Glaze, director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters.
The engineering behind Ingenuity was no easy feat thanks to tough conditions on the red planet as well as space, durability, and performance requirements.
During Martian daytime, the planet’s surface receives much less solar energy than Earth during its daytime, and nighttime temperatures can drop as low as minus 130 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 90 degrees Celsius), which can freeze and crack unprotected electrical components. To fit within the available accommodations provided by the Perseverance rover, the Ingenuity helicopter had to be small. To fly in the Mars environment, it must be lightweight. To survive the frigid Martian nights, it must have enough energy to power internal heaters.
“Every step we have taken since this journey began six years ago has been uncharted territory in the history of aircraft,” said Bob Balaram, Mars Helicopter chief engineer at JPL. “And while getting deployed to the surface will be a big challenge, surviving that first night on Mars alone, without the rover protecting it and keeping it powered, will be an even bigger one.”
Before Ingenuity takes its first flight on Mars, it must be squarely in the middle of its airfield—a 33-by-33-foot patch of Martian real estate chosen for its flatness and lack of obstructions. Once the helicopter and rover teams confirm that Perseverance is situated exactly where they want it inside the airfield, the elaborate process to deploy the helicopter on the surface of Mars begins.
Taking Flight
The helicopter deployment process will take about six sols (six days, four hours on Earth).
On the first sol, the team on Earth will activate a bolt-breaking device, releasing a locking mechanism held the helicopter firmly against the rover’s belly.
The following sol, they will fire a cable-cutting pyrotechnic device, enabling the mechanized arm that holds Ingenuity to begin rotating the helicopter out of its horizontal position. This is also when the rotorcraft will extend two of its four landing legs.
During the third sol, a small electric motor will finish rotating Ingenuity until it latches, bringing the helicopter completely vertical.
During the fourth sol, the final two landing legs will snap into position. In its final position, the helicopter will hang suspended at about 5 inches over the Martian surface. At that point, only a single bolt and a couple dozen tiny electrical contacts will connect the helicopter to Perseverance.
On the fifth sol of deployment, the team will use Perseverance as a power source to charge Ingenuity’s six battery cells.
“Once we cut the cord with Perseverance and drop those final five inches to the surface, we want to have our big friend drive away as quickly as possible so we can get the Sun’s rays on our solar panel and begin recharging our batteries,” said Balaram.
On the sixth and final scheduled sol of this deployment phase, the team will need to confirm three things:
Ingenuity’s four legs are firmly on the surface of Jezero Crater
The rover did, indeed, drive about 16 feet away
Both helicopter and rover are communicating via their onboard radios
This milestone also initiates the 30-sol clock during which time all preflight checks and flight tests must take place.
“Ingenuity is an experimental engineering flight test—we want to see if we can fly at Mars,” said MiMi Aung, project manager for Ingenuity Mars Helicopter at JPL. “There are no science instruments onboard and no goals to obtain scientific information. We are confident that all the engineering data we want to obtain both on the surface of Mars and aloft can be done within this 30-sol window.”
If the helicopter survives the first night of the sequence period on the surface of Mars, the team will spend the next several sols doing everything possible to ensure a successful flight.
Once the team is ready to attempt the first flight, Perseverance will receive and relay to Ingenuity the final flight instructions from JPL mission controllers. Ingenuity will run its rotors to 2,537 rpm and, if all final self-checks look good, lift off. After climbing at a rate 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 touch back down on the Martian surface.
Several hours after the first flight, Perseverance will downlink Ingenuity’s first set of engineering data and, possibly, images and video. From that data, the team expects to be able to determine if their first attempt to fly at Mars was a success.
“Mars is hard,” said Aung. “Our plan is to work whatever the Red Planet throws at us the very same way we handled every challenge we’ve faced over the past six years – together, with tenacity and a lot of hard work, and a little Ingenuity.”
