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Mars NASA

NASA Successfully Flies Small Helicopter On Mars (bbc.com) 49

Posted by BeauHD from the Wright-Brothers-moment dept.
NASA's first attempt to fly its "Ingenuity" helicopter on Mars was a success, marking what the space agency says is the first powered, controlled flight by an aircraft on another world. The BBC reports: The space agency is promising more adventurous flights in the days ahead. Ingenuity will be commanded to fly higher and further as engineers seek to test the limits of the technology. The rotorcraft was carried to Mars in the belly of Nasa's Perseverance Rover, which touched down in Jezero Crater on the Red Planet in February.

The demonstration saw the Mars-copter rise to just over 3m, hover, swivel 96 degrees, hover some more, and then set down. In all, it managed almost 40 seconds of flight, from take-off to landing. Getting airborne on the Red Planet is not easy. The atmosphere is very thin, just 1% of the density here at Earth. This gives the blades on a rotorcraft very little to bite into to gain lift. There's help from the lower gravity at Mars, but still -- it takes a lot of work to get up off the ground. Ingenuity was therefore made extremely light and given the power (a peak power of 350 watts) to turn those blades extremely fast - at over 2,500 revolutions per minute for this particular flight. Control was autonomous. The distance to Mars - currently just under 300 million km -- means radio signals take minutes to traverse the intervening space. Flying by joystick is simply out of the question.

Ingenuity has two cameras onboard. A black-and-white camera that points down to the ground, which is used for navigation, and a high-resolution colour camera that looks out to the horizon. Sample navigation images sent back to Earth revealed the helicopter's shadow on the floor of the crater as it came back in to land. Satellites will send home more pictures of the flight over the next day. There was only sufficient bandwidth in the orbiters' first overflight to return a short snatch of video from Perseverance, which was watching and snapping away from a distance of 65m. Longer sequences should become available in due course.
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NASA Successfully Flies Small Helicopter On Mars More

NASA Successfully Flies Small Helicopter On Mars

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  • What about skyhooks? (Score:4, Interesting)

    by sconeu ( 64226 ) on Monday April 19, 2021 @04:32PM (#61291888) Homepage Journal

    I've had a problem with the "first powered flight" thing.

    I'd argue that the Curiosity and Perseverance skyhooks were powered controlled flight.

    Also, what about Apollo? And the Russian sample return Luna missions?

    What I'd go with is the first powered and controlled flight FROM THE SURFACE of another world.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by sconeu ( 64226 )

      Actually, I'd go with first powered and controlled ATMOSPHERIC flight FROM THE SURFACE of an other world.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward
      One could argue that the examples you listed above were not "aircraft" since they achieved their "flight" using rocket propulsion rather than with aerodynamic lift.

      • Exactly. When aeronautics engineers talk about powered flight, they are talking about some propeller and/or blade configuration that can achieve lift. You don't really need to do that with a rocket, any aerodynamic design is more designed to allow passage through atmosphere (though obviously, reducing resistance means less fuel as well). Conceivably, a big enough rocket with a big enough capacity to withstand thermal heating and enough thrusters to keep it stable while in atmosphere could be shaped like a b

    • Re:What about skyhooks? (Score:5, Insightful)

      by spun ( 1352 ) <[moc.oohay] [ta] [yranoituloverevol]> on Monday April 19, 2021 @04:50PM (#61291952) Journal

      But it's not just "first powered flight." It is, and I quote, "First powered, controlled flight by an aircraft on another world."

      Aircraft. Implying air, and flight using said air as the reaction mass instead of rockets. Rockets and aircraft are two different things.

      • "First powered, controlled flight by an aircraft on another world."

        Technically it is the first powered, controlled flight by an aircraft on Mars. It seems highly unlikely that we are the only species in the entire universe to have developed powered flight. So claiming it is the first on "another world" seems very unlikely to be true even if we do not yet have the evidence to show that.

        • But until we know otherwise, the record still stands. At the point when we know differently, we'll also have to resolve more thorny issues, such as our arrogant declaration of "Miss Universe" winners.

          • But until we know otherwise, the record still stands.

            Not really because it makes you sound like a little kid saying that something is the "best in the whole universe" while only having a vague knowledge of only a tiny corner of the universe. Records claimed in total ignorance of the competition are not records. This is why we have the Guinness Book of _World_ Records not "universe" or "galactic" records. By your argument, we should start referring to the blue whale as the largest creature in the Universe which is as silly as it sounds.

      • oh jesus starting to sound like the russian space program where after gagarin, they basically kept alaunching the same Soyuz they just changed the pax. First woman in space, first lesbian woma in space, first lesbian mum in space, first man in space with three fingers. You can only do that so many times and the games up.

    • I think usually when they speak of "powered flight" they usually are talking about some sort of conventional winged craft; helicopter, airplane or jet aircraft. I suppose maybe rocket planes fit in there somewhere, but I think they pretty much fit more squarely in the general term of rockets. In other words, you're using "air" (however that's constituted on any planet) as the medium, and some sort of propeller or turbine engine to achieve lift via use of displacement. Rocket engines pretty much function pur

    • "I'd argue that the Curiosity and Perseverance skyhooks were powered controlled flight."

      Usually 'flying' means not hanging from a rope.

      • But the craft that lowered Curiosity was in controlled flight .. albeit rocket powered. Also some of the asteroid and lunar sample return missions .. not to mention the Lunar lander the astronauts used.

    • They are talking about aerodynamic flight using wings. All previous flight away from Earth has been rocket ascent and descent, or slowing os descent by heat shield and parachute. Helicopter rotors are considered rotating wings.

    • ...of an airplane, presumably.

    • Well does rocket powered ascent from another world count? Thatâ(TM)s been done (lunar sample return, lunar lander, asteroid Bennu sample return etc.)

      I think you mean surface ascent on another world that relied on aerodynamics.

  • Damn I must have missed something between now and when they first did it this morning https://science.slashdot.org/s... [slashdot.org]

  • Bandwidth (Score:5, Interesting)

    by stikves ( 127823 ) on Monday April 19, 2021 @04:58PM (#61291984) Homepage

    The current issue with the exploration is bandwidth. This is not to minimize their achievement. 2 mbit from the orbit of Mars is no small feat:
    https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/miss... [nasa.gov].

    However that is one of the satellites, and the average is much lower.

    That means the scientists need to download the "thumbnail" images (or the summary video in this case), and select items for later download.

    So if any future grants are possible, we should invest more in the "deep space" communication network, which will be ever more important if we want to actually land people on Mars.

    • > So if any future grants are possible, we should invest more in the "deep space" communication network, which will be ever more important if we want to actually land people on Mars.

      And you'll have to put redundant links in a decent-sized orbit around the Sun so that when Mars is opposite the Sun from us, we can bounce signals around it reliably.

      • The truly amazing thing about the orbiters around Mars is that they're all setup to use the same radio configurations, frequencies, protocols, etc. Any rover can bounce a signal off most any (US and Euro, not sure about Indian or Russian) orbiters. Yes, you have to wait for one to come over the horizon and be reachable; having more of them out there will increase the coverage. But ... rovers don't have to communicate direct to Earth and Euro landers don't have to wait for Euro orbiters to come over the hori

    • Buy more ships. [youtu.be]

  • Twitter video is fux0red .. (Score:3)

    by thomst ( 1640045 ) on Monday April 19, 2021 @05:59PM (#61292124) Homepage

    Here's a very short, looped gif from NASA's website of the copter hovering over the Martian landscape:

    Ingenuity hovering in the distance [nasa.gov]

  • what ? Airwolf ? What is wrong with you people ?

  • From the Wright Brothers [si.edu] to off-world flight in 118 years.

    Mind-blowing.

    When do we encounter the first extraterrestrial? A huge fish-like creature swimming in Europa's vast ocean? [nasa.gov]

    If it can be demonstrated that life formed independently in two places around the same star, it would then be reasonable to suspect that life springs up in the universe fairly easily once the necessary ingredients are present, and that life might be found throughout our galaxy, and the universe.

    • Drilling into Europa's ocean will require a lot of novel tech, we couldn't even get to those aliens if they were that far inside Earth. My bet is on discovering microbes a few meters below the surface of Mars.

  • https://youtu.be/wMnOo2zcjXA [youtu.be]

    I haven't logged into Slashdot in years. When this sort of big news happens, I just want to see the outcome. If I'm excited by it, THEN I'll look into the back stories and reports on it.

  • Seems overblown to me. The Mars Climate Orbiter made a much bigger impact...

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