NASA's Mars Helicopter Survives First Cold Martian Night On Its Own (nasa.gov) 34
"NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter has emerged from its first night on the surface of Mars," reports NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The Ingenuity Mars Helicopter was deployed from the belly of NASA's Perseverance rover on April 3rd. In the days to come, Ingenuity will be the first aircraft to attempt powered, controlled flight on another planet. From the report: Evening temperatures at Jezero Crater can plunge as low as minus 130 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 90 degrees Celsius), which can freeze and crack unprotected electrical components and damage the onboard batteries required for flight. "This is the first time that Ingenuity has been on its own on the surface of Mars," said MiMi Aung, Ingenuity project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. "But we now have confirmation that we have the right insulation, the right heaters, and enough energy in its battery to survive the cold night, which is a big win for the team. We're excited to continue to prepare Ingenuity for its first flight test."
To ensure the solar array atop the helicopter's rotors could begin getting sunlight as soon as possible, Perseverance was instructed to move away from Ingenuity shortly after deploying it. Until the helicopter put its four legs onto the Martian surface, Ingenuity remained attached to the belly of the rover, receiving power from Perseverance, which touched down at Jezero Crater on Feb. 18. The rover serves as a communications relay between Ingenuity and Earth, and it will use its suite of cameras to observe the flight characteristics of the solar-powered helicopter from "Van Zyl Overlook."
To ensure the solar array atop the helicopter's rotors could begin getting sunlight as soon as possible, Perseverance was instructed to move away from Ingenuity shortly after deploying it. Until the helicopter put its four legs onto the Martian surface, Ingenuity remained attached to the belly of the rover, receiving power from Perseverance, which touched down at Jezero Crater on Feb. 18. The rover serves as a communications relay between Ingenuity and Earth, and it will use its suite of cameras to observe the flight characteristics of the solar-powered helicopter from "Van Zyl Overlook."
Design of the helicopter (Score:3)
Can anyone enlightening me about the design of the copter? It said it moved away from Ingenuity but it hasn't yet made it's first flight, so it's more like a flying rover right? Also, I was wondering how effective it was to designed a copter with a solar array, if it's mounted on the rotor, than it seems like that would be excess weight. If it's under the rotor, it seems like it would not be fully effective, as the rotor would block some sunlight. Is there any reason it doesn't just always dock with Ingenuity and essentially utilize it for it's power supply? It seems like a lot of design considerations went into the copter which I didn't fully consider and are also distinctly different than the matter of it being air-worthy on Mars but also the insulation issue mentioned in the article. Anyone willing to fill me in with some more of these design details, it would be much appreciated.
Re:Design of the helicopter (Score:5, Informative)
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/j... [nasa.gov]
Re:Design of the helicopter (Score:5, Informative)
It said it moved away from Ingenuity but it hasn't yet made it's first flight, so it's more like a flying rover
Ingenuity is just the copter, Perseverance is the main rover. So the copter didn't move, Perseverance did. Solar panel is indeed on top [wikipedia.org].
Is there any reason it doesn't just always dock with (Perseverance) and essentially utilize it for it's power supply
Given the rotor turns at 2400 rpm I think they want it to be as far away from Perseverance as possible in case they've got their calculations on powered flight on Mars wrong and it loses control, those carbon fiber blades could easily shred important cables on the rover.
It's only really a tech demonstrator with no real function in the mission beyond seeing if a drone on Mars is a practical idea, no doubt if it works a future mission will have something more like a quadcopter with ducted blades that can safely dock with a main rover and take off when needed to perform surveys or other scientific studies.
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Great insights. Thanks.
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It's only really a tech demonstrator with no real function in the mission beyond seeing if a drone on Mars is a practical idea
I'd take it a step farther and say it's more of a public relations stunt. People can relate to a drone flying around much more than they can to a rover that creeps so slowly its progress is measured in meters per day. They'll make a short hop using the charge that's already in the battery so Perseverance can take its picture, let it charge for a few days or weeks, then try to launch it again. The solar panels won't provide enough juice to do anything useful.
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People can relate to a drone flying around much more than they can to a rover that creeps so slowly its progress is measured in meters per day.
Because everyone flies to work instead of getting stuck in traffic...
Re:Design of the helicopter (Score:5, Insightful)
no doubt if it works a future mission will have something more like a quadcopter with ducted blades
The problem with a quadcopter on mars is that you need to separate the blades. The blades have to be relatively long for mars, so a quad would have to be quite large. A singlecopter may actually be more complicated overall, but its frame is much smaller. The payoff would be better with multiple singlecopters.
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Can anyone enlightening me about the design of the copter? It said it moved away from Ingenuity but it hasn't yet made it's first flight, so it's more like a flying rover right?
Perseverance is the rover, Ingenuity the helicopter. Perseverance dropped Ingenuity onto the ground and then moved away from it. Ingenuity has not yet moved on its own.
See DontBeAMoran's link for images and more in-depth information.
The development cost I see quoted for Ingenuity alone was USD 80 million, so I really expect there's a damn good reason for every single decision made in the design and that we're not going to second guess improvements in these comments.
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Re:Design of the helicopter (Score:5, Insightful)
I think this returns to AC-x's points. Since they want to get the rover as far away from the copter, it's probably most practical to do these things over a 24 hour period but this is primarily a guess. Maybe part of the test is to see how well it handles the night-time conditions but since the rover is already insulated and has heaters, it seems like it's not too harder to design the copter in a similar fashion.
As Mascot said, ever design probably has a lot of factors which are being considered -- so my two guess are it's either related to the safety of the rover or it's related to another independent test, such as the night-time survivability. Forecasting for the flight might also be a consideration.
Re: Design of the helicopter (Score:5, Insightful)
If I had a list of activities I wanted to perform and some of those activities had a high probability of destruction if they failed, I'd tend to perform them from least to most risky.
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That's pretty much it, least risky is disconnecting from the rover, next would be seeing if their testing is correct and an unheated electronics package can survive the night. Heaters suck up a lot of energy that could be devoted to other things, if they now know how to make electronics that can survive the Martian night then that's valuable information. Electronics have come a long way since Viking, but cold so intense that carbon dioxide freezes out of the atmosphere is still a tough challenge.
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Sure, and every new site that we set up I should be able to program card readers, access levels, alarm inputs, and cameras accurately and have them work correctly the first time, but we all know that rarely ever actually happens. :-)
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I need you to have a talk with our project managers...
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The mission profile for Ingenuity is 5 or 6 flights over 30 sols. So IMHO it makes sense to verify that it handle a martian night.
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Thanks for the input.
Re: Design of the helicopter (Score:5, Interesting)
NYT had a neat article last year about how their two-rotor design evolved:
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/0... [nytimes.com]
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I briefly looked up contra-rotating to make sure I remember it correctly but bumped into what I think answers your questions. The wiki says, it minimizes torque. I do not know if you have done some of the simple experiments with torque, but I often think of it as a force that stabilizes a rotating to a specific plane. I am not too familiar with helicopter mechanics and how they adjusts their motion but from what I see, the blades tilt. In this case, the trick would be balancing the torque to obtain the a cr
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No wrong per se, but incomplete.
Most single-rotor craft have a tail rotor* whose entire job is to counter the torque that is generated "equal and opposite" to the rotation of the main rotor. If the main rotor is rotating clockwise, the body of the craft will want to rotate anti-clockwise.
The function of the second, counter-rotating main rotor is to cancel out the counter-rotation forces on the body, eliminating the need for a tail rotor, while providing additional lift. There are a number of terrestrial he
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If you have only one propeller you have to compensate the counterrotation of the flight body. Look at a helicopter and his tail rotor. With two rotors spinning in opposite directions (there are actually helicopters doing that), you do not need a tail rotor or a similar compensation measure.
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An important benefit to the panels being just under the blades: the downward flow of air blows dust off the solar panels. This is a major problem on the rovers when a dust storm rolls through.
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Please forgive the Cynicism, but... (Score:2, Troll)
Obviously I remain hugely impressed by this and other NASA achievements, but come on guys, this is slow-balling, even for you. If you couldn't design Ingenuity to cope with the known environmental conditions [before we get to whether or not it works] then, I'm sorry, but you need to hang up your space hat.
Re:Please forgive the Cynicism, but... (Score:4, Insightful)
... another way of putting this would be, "Hey, this thing we spent $85 million developing [voanews.com] (scroll right to the bottom of the linked article) didn't die after being left by itself for a night"...
Obviously I remain hugely impressed by this and other NASA achievements, but come on guys, this is slow-balling, even for you. If you couldn't design Ingenuity to cope with the known environmental conditions [before we get to whether or not it works] then, I'm sorry, but you need to hang up your space hat.
Design and testing in the lab is not the same as testing in the field. Why would you ever need test pilots if it was?
From the article: “This is the first time that Ingenuity has been on its own on the surface of Mars,” said MiMi Aung, Ingenuity project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “But we now have confirmation that we have the right insulation, the right heaters, and enough energy in its battery to survive the cold night, which is a big win for the team. We’re excited to continue to prepare Ingenuity for its first flight test.”
Re:Please forgive the Cynicism, but... (Score:5, Insightful)
but come on guys, this is slow-balling, even for you. If you couldn't design Ingenuity to cope with the known environmental conditions [before we get to whether or not it works] then, I'm sorry, but you need to hang up your space hat.
But this is testing whether it works. It is testing that solar panels and battery systems and heaters and radio links all work as expected.
Any one of those systems could have been fucked up on the trip to Mars, and no amount of impressive design skills could have stopped any number of fuck ups. So the prudent thing to do is to test them before you start testing the part of the mission that hasn't been done before (the flying bit).