NASA's Mars Helicopter Makes Second Flight (phys.org) 42
NASA successfully carried out a second flight on Mars on Thursday of its mini helicopter Ingenuity, a 52-second sortie that saw it climb to a height of 16 feet. Phys.Org reports: "So far, the engineering telemetry we have received and analyzed tell us that the flight met expectations," said Bob Balaram, Ingenuity's chief engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in southern California. "We have two flights of Mars under our belts, which means that there is still a lot to learn during this month of Ingenuity," Balaram said in a statement. The US space agency conducted the first flight of the four pound (1.8 kilogram) rotorcraft on Monday, the first powered flight ever on another planet. That time Ingenuity rose to a height of 10 feet and then touched down after 39.1 seconds.
For the second flight, which lasted 51.9 seconds, Ingenuity climbed to 16 feet, hovered briefly, tilted and then accelerated sideways for seven feet. "The helicopter came to a stop, hovered in place, and made turns to point its camera in different directions," said Havard Grip, Ingenuity's chief pilot. "Then it headed back to the center of the airfield to land. "It sounds simple, but there are many unknowns regarding how to fly a helicopter on Mars."
For the second flight, which lasted 51.9 seconds, Ingenuity climbed to 16 feet, hovered briefly, tilted and then accelerated sideways for seven feet. "The helicopter came to a stop, hovered in place, and made turns to point its camera in different directions," said Havard Grip, Ingenuity's chief pilot. "Then it headed back to the center of the airfield to land. "It sounds simple, but there are many unknowns regarding how to fly a helicopter on Mars."
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clearly.
pretty graphs.
no pictures.
it did not happen.
Off-the shelf parts (Score:5, Interesting)
What is impressive about this helicopter is that it was built with off-the-shelf parts. Its on-board processor was described as "100 times more powerful" than the one on the rover, which means that it is not a radiation-hardened processor. Also the batteries are very vulnerable to low temperatures, and at night they can reach -90 C. The heating has to work very well to keep the batteries alive.
Adding aerial imagery to future missions will be a huge plus. Right now we have up-close images or satellite images, the aerial images fill a science gap where there is still a lot of speculation.
The seasonal changes in color of the gullies spotted by the satellites cannot be explored by the rovers, and here is where a helicopter will be ideal. At the moment there is a lot of speculation of whether or not those changes are due to water flowing on the surface.
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Also the batteries are very vulnerable to low temperatures, and at night they can reach -90 C. The heating has to work very well to keep the batteries alive.
No aerogel for Ingenuity? I'm mildly surprised by that.
Re:Off-the shelf parts (Score:5, Interesting)
Despite its light weight aerogel insulation would have added too much extra mass to Ingenuity. Even with extra insulation it would have needed component heaters, they might not need to run as long during the night but they'd still be necessary. Ingenuity wouldn't receive enough insolation during the day to get its core temperature high enough to survive during the night.
Good insulation also presents an overheating problem. The internal components are all going to generate heat during operation. The insulation is going to trap that heat and likely require an active cooling system to dissipate it.
Using only component heaters with minimal insulation works in both the high internal heat and cold night situation. During operation heat is dissipated by the cold atmosphere and the heaters can kick in if it gets too cold. At night the heaters used stored power to keep everything warm. During the day the solar panel will top off the batteries allowing for a flight, landing, and data uplink. They'll then keep charging to handle the following night.
That's all done with mass that would be required regardless of insulation. If there's enough power to just run heaters at night then extra insulation is a wasted part of the mass budget and presents overheating problems.
Re: Off-the shelf parts (Score:1)
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What is impressive about this helicopter
is that each time it takes off the whole world makes a lot of noise around. Have an helicopter take off on the Moon, that would be impressive.
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Sneaky Non-standard Measurements (Score:4, Funny)
The feet of martians are actually about three quarters the size of human feet, so it's not as impressive as it sounds.
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does not matter, nasa uses metric, and meters don't change.
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Why do we still see 'feet' in the title then instead of m? Mars is not the US so on Mars they use SI units just like everybody else.
Metric deficiency (Score:3)
Because the article is written by people with "metric deficiency"
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Because the article is written by people with "metric deficiency"
Look buddy, I didn’t go to years of math school to simply add or cut off a few zeros when I need to convert units. What, you want just anyone to be able to make sense of it?
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That's how science works.
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"Why do we still see 'feet' in the title then instead of m? "
Because, internationally, aircraft flight altitudes ("flight levels") are reported in feet, not meters (with a few oddball exceptions: Kyrgyzstan, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, North Korea etc).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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Ah that is an interesting reason. But this is an interplanetary helicopter, so why not drop that habit for Ingenuity and just use SI units?
Re: Sneaky Non-standard Measurements (Score:3)
Because there are two kinds of countries: ones that use SI units for everyday life and ones that flew a drone on Mars.
I honestly don't get why people hate on feet and pounds and inches beyond just wanting to have something to hate on.
Feet and inches are more human-scale than meters. For example, you can quickly convey that someone of tall or short with feet using one significant digit. 5 feet is shorter than average, 6 ft is a hair above average, 7 ft is basketball star material. Metric requires two signifi
Re: Sneaky Non-standard Measurements (Score:2)
I totally agree with this, and it's a result of making units out of necessity that are based upon reasonable human ranges. As someone growing up with imperial units, I like that there's a lot of extra range across human scales, whereas metric makes for easier math, but are not as intuitive to me. Of course folks growing up with metric may feel the opposite.
I don't like that the range of cool to warm (to me as a human) covers about 5 C. The foot is also a great intermediate distance. The yard is ~1 meter,
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My real gripe with imperial is the base. It would be far more convenient if 1 inch were 0.1 feet, a mile was 5000 feet, a pound was 20 ounces, etc., just to make the math easier.
It's interesting that you feel that way, because the base used for inch/foot must have been chosen to make the math easier. 12 inches to the foot means the a foot is evenly divisible by 1,2,3,4,6, and 12. Same reason why we have 60 seconds to the minute (1,2,3,4,5,6,10,12,15,20,30,and 60).
Ounces per pound (16) is obviously a binary number system chosen because it is easier to divide something in half than to divide into anything else.
I don't know what pushed the mile to be 5280 feet, but 5280 is 2 * 2 *
Re: Sneaky Non-standard Measurements (Score:2)
That's a fair point re: 12 and 16. I think I had read that the 12" to a foot is because of the easy division. But then below 1" we're in a base 2 or base 10 (for machinists) world.
So much of what I do for a living spans orders of magnitude, though, that I'd personally rather them be easy numbers so that I can just cross out or add zeroes in my head :)
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you may have 12 fingers.
I have 1010. So I learn math in base 2.
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It's simple: I have to convert them all the time because I don't live in the States. I hardly ever have to use them in real life because all the world uses SI except you and the British. So for me it's very annoying to stumble over feet and inches all the time when I read something written by an American.
Re: Sneaky Non-standard Measurements (Score:2)
Funny, I never seem to have trouble stumbling over SI units when I read something from outside the US. Maybe you're just not good at arithmetic?
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seems also China is using meters :)
20% of humanity already.
Re: Sneaky Non-standard Measurements (Score:2)
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Why do we still see 'feet' in the title then instead of m?
Fuck off.
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The feet of martians are actually about three quarters the size of human feet, so it's not as impressive as it sounds.
This is a common misconception. Due to the low gravity, martians actually have feet about 3.28 feet long. This has led to much confusion about if a foot is a meter and ultimately resulted in a few crashes.
Does anyone know if it will scout ahead? (Score:2)
So once the five test flights are done, would it be possible for the helicopter to scout ahead for the rover?
I mean, I heard that maybe the rover is expected to travel up to 200m per day, would that be within the range of the helicopter to fly, find a new landing site, then go to a landing site found the previous day? Rinse and repeat. If it could be done (and if the helicopter was programmed to fly to the side so that if there was a crash it wouldn't endanger the rover) does anyone know if NASA would act
Re: Does anyone know if it will scout ahead? (Score:5, Informative)
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They expect to gradually push the envelope until it crashes, judging by interviews from before the first flight. That's the only way to learn where the actual limits lie. Later Mars helicopters will do other science than experimenting on themselves.
Well, that certainly seems like an extreme way to dispose of electronics.
Imagine us strolling out to the desert one day to find a bunch of dead birthday drones given to the Martian kids...
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They expect to gradually push the envelope until it crashes, judging by interviews from before the first flight. That's the only way to learn where the actual limits lie. Later Mars helicopters will do other science than experimenting on themselves.
Well, that certainly seems like an extreme way to dispose of electronics.
Imagine us strolling out to the desert one day to find a bunch of dead birthday drones given to the Martian kids...
As opposed to all the other junk that has been left lying around on Mars? EG Parachutes, Skycranes, Thermal shields, Lander modules.
But I'm certain that once people actually get to Mars, that a lot of this "refuse" will become valuable (as in $$$) historical artifacts.
Fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars (Score:2)
the first powered flight ever on another planet.
That's not true. Not too long ago, a rocket crane lowered another vehicle onto the surface of Mars, then flew away once releasing it.
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It didn't 'fly' using aerodynamics, it rocketed away.
Mars helicopter makes 34th flight! (Score:2)
Headline coming soon: Mars helicopter makes 388th flight!