![]() ![]() Oh, and it will need a computer powerful enough to run the machine vision algorithms the helicopter will use to autonomously navigate the Martian landscape. Its hardware also had to meet the demands of the mission, like having a motor that can spin the rotor blades five times faster than a typical helicopter so it can generate lift. Even though the chopper’s weight was capped at four pounds, it had to be strong enough to withstand the intense forces it would encounter during launch and landing. The Ingenuity team had to balance the stringent weight requirements with competing demands on durability and performance. “We really tried to pull every milligram out of every single component, because that’s really what it takes to get the weight low enough to fly on Mars” “We had to keep everything super lightweight to make the whole program work,” says Ben Pipenberg, an aeromechanical engineer at AeroVironment. But flying a small helicopter on Mars makes piloting a giant solar powered wing on Earth look easy. That altitude on Earth is comparable to flying near the surface on Mars because of the planet’s tenuous atmosphere. In 2001, the company contracted with the agency to build a solar-powered drone that managed to fly at 96,000 feet 20 years later, the record still stands. The company has a lot of experience operating autonomous aircraft in extreme environments-and a bit of history with NASA. NASA tapped AeroVironment, a drone manufacturer in California, to build the hardware for the mission. “Beyond 30 days, we’d just be a distraction.” “The whole intent of this campaign is to get engineering data so we can say this worked the way we thought and there were no surprises on Mars,” says Balaram. Balaram and his team will only have a month to conduct up to five test flights. (And it will literally be dropped-the helicopter is attached to the belly of the rover.) Once the rover and the helicopter part ways, the chopper’s days are numbered. If everything looks good, its first order of business will be to find a clearing in the rock-strewn Jezero crater to drop off its passenger. Once Perseverance arrives on Mars, it will spend a few weeks checking out its systems. The whole apparatus weighs less than a full two-liter soda bottle, but it's hardy enough to withstand the extreme environments it will face during launch, landing, and its day-to-day existence on the Martian surface. Up top, there are two pairs of rotor blades, each four feet in diameter, sandwiched between Ingenuity’s body and a rectangular solar panel. Ingenuity’s hardware-cameras, communications equipment, avionics-is stuffed in a small cube that will be suspended in the air by four spindly legs that make it look a bit like a robotic insect. Ingenuity won’t be able to do any actual science, but it’s the first step toward an extraterrestrial aircraft that can. They could take aerial snapshots to help a rover plot the best path or collect samples and return them to a stationary lander for analysis. A rover can only cover a few dozen kilometers over the course of several years, but future extraterrestrial drones could easily cover that in a day. For everything in between, it helps to have an airborne system. Satellites are good at getting a global understanding of a planet, and the rovers are great at exploring a relatively small amount of terrain in minute detail. “It’s a high-risk, high-reward mission that could enable us to go to lots of places we haven’t been able to go before.” “I see it as kind of a Wright brothers moment on another planet,” says Bob Balaram, the chief engineer for the Mars helicopter project at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Sometime next spring, probably in April, Ingenuity will spin up its rotor blades and become the first spacecraft to go airborne on Mars. It will also carry a payload unlike anything that’s ever been boosted into space: a small autonomous helicopter called Ingenuity. Perseverance will boot up a mission to collect samples of Martian dirt that might have traces of ancient life, so that they can be returned to Earth by another mission later this decade. Later this week, NASA plans to launch its fifth Mars rover, Perseverance, on a six-month journey to the Red Planet. ![]()
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