NASA Mars Helicopter Goes Farther and Faster For Dramatic Fourth Flight

NASA's Ingenuity helicopter completed its fourth and most ambitious test flight across Mars on Friday. CNET reports: NASA JPL tweeted "Success," saying Ingenuity went father and faster than ever before. NASA also shared a nifty image from one of the Perseverance rover's cameras showing the helicopter in flight in the distance. Ingenuity had originally been scheduled for a fourth flight on Thursday, but a known glitch prevented the rotorcraft from switching into flight mode. The chopper remained safe and healthy and ready for the redo.

The plan for the latest test was to fly the helicopter to an altitude of 16 feet (5 meters), collect images of the landscape below, hover and then head back to its takeoff spot. The flight path was set to take it 436 feet (133 meters) downrange and last 117 seconds. It takes time to send the data back from Mars, but NASA is expecting to receive a bounty of photos snapped by the helicopter during the flight. This will help prove the rotorcraft's potential for use as a scout that can assist surface vehicles like rovers as they explore from the ground. NASA said the plucky chopper already "has met or surpassed all of its technical objectives." That gave the helicopter team license to try the more daring fourth flight to push its capabilities in the thin atmosphere of Mars.

This is great.

[carcomp]

I love how new and exciting this is. We've gone slow and purposefully on other worlds, but never flew around and basically pulled stunts on another world for the fun of it.

Re:

[Aighearach]

The physics of aeronautics have been understood for a long time, this is not particularly new or exciting other than in a Guinness Records sort of "the first" way. We knew what the air pressure and gravity were, so if it flies, and the flight characteristics, are just a matter of "did we build it right?" Physics works, we already know physics works.

New and exciting is new design of lander, where the engineering constraints are actually not well established, and difficult to simulate.

Martian News

[nospam007]

Black Helicopter sighted again, beware.

Dramatic?

[RightwingNutjob]

Was there a plucky underdog protagonist?

A mustache-twirling villian busily working away at his evil scheme to keep the helicopter grounded?

A chance twist of fate?

A happy ending against all odds?

A ride off into the sunset?

Thin atmosphere

[RitchCraft]

Given the thin atmosphere on Mars I would have thought such a small vehicle would have no chance of lift. Way to go NASA! Next, try a balloon and see how that goes. It would be a great dress rehearsal for something like a Titan balloon flyover in the future.

Re:

[iggymanz]

Titan's atmosphere is fifty percent denser than Earth's though!

Meanwhile Mars is a mere six thousandth of Earth's. It's why both those pairs of rotors on drone have counter-rotating blades and are doing a crazy 2400 RPM.

Balloons can work, just need four times the diameter to lift same weight as on Earth though when the Sun is shining (the day / night lift ratios is whole other topic)

Re:

[RitchCraft]

I watched a science show a while back where an astronomer was talking about a balloon being perfect for Titan. Now I know why. I thought perhaps with Mars being close a balloon attempt there would be a good proving ground. I guess not with such thin atmosphere and I didn't even give the cold nights a though either. I just looked up rotational speeds of helicopters and they are from 225 to 500 RPM, so yeah, 2400 RPM is wicked fast.

Re:

[feedayeen]

Venus is also another strong candidate for a balloon method. It's atmosphere is much denser than Earths, but at the altitude of near Earth pressure, the temperature is relatively habitable too. I'm not sure if we can inflate a balloon falling under parachutes, but the skycrane landing on Mars makes that path much more viable if slower descent is required.

Its atmosphere's still going to host a load of problems though between corrosion and limited visibility but hopefully instruments can survive long enough t

Scouting and operations demonstrations next

[caseih]

Since the tests have been successful, and since Perseverance is ahead of schedule in its hardware checkout timeline, NASA has decided to do some more demonstration flights to do some scouting and other things that might be useful on future missions. Very cool stuff! https://mars.nasa.gov/news/893... [nasa.gov]

Mars copter

[groobly]

Now taking bets on what number flight will be the last headline for Marscopter. 139? 356? Enter now, $5.