NASA’s engineers already made history Monday with the
39.1-second flight of Ingenuity, a small helicopter, in the thin atmosphere on
Mars. On Thursday, they added to their success when the experimental vehicle’s
second flight was higher, longer and riskier.
اضافة اعلان
At 5:33am Eastern time — it was 12:33pm in Jezero crater on Mars
— Ingenuity autonomously lifted again off the red surface of Mars, kicking up a
cloud of dust as it ascended. It reached a height of 5m, tilted itself by 5
degrees to move 2m sideways, hovered and turned to point its color camera in
multiple directions, then returned to its starting point to land.
This flight lasted 59.1 seconds.
“It sounds simple, but there are many unknowns regarding how to
fly a helicopter on Mars,” Håvard Grip, Ingenuity’s chief pilot, said in a NASA
news release. “That’s why we’re here — to make these unknowns known.”
The Ingenuity helicopter is a demonstration of a new aerial
capability that NASA could use in future years. It was added to Perseverance, a
rover that cost billions of dollars to send to Mars to search for signs of
extinct microbial life. Although the small rotorcraft cost a fraction of the
mission that carried it — $85 million — it packs sophisticated computer
hardware and software.
The project required engineers at NASA to devise solutions to
major engineering problems. Most difficult among them was how to make a
helicopter fly in 1/100th the air found at Earth’s surface, without which it is
difficult to fly. The team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory that built
Ingenuity overcame these problems with ultralight materials that could spin at
roughly 2,400 rotations per minute.
In its first flight, on Monday, Ingenuity rose to a height of 3m
before pivoting 90 degrees and landing almost exactly where it started. But the
short hop was the first powered flight by a helicopter on another world, and
extended NASA’s list of distinctions on Mars.
It also reinforced how the solar system’s mysteries can be
unlocked with modes of transportation beyond robotic surface rovers and
orbiting satellites. Engineers on Earth may be more inspired to explore the
potential of other unconventional spacecraft like a robotic blimp to study the
clouds of Venus or a submarine drone to dive into the oceans of icy moons like
Europa.
There are no current plans to put a second helicopter on Mars.
But
Bob Balaram, the project’s chief engineer, said Monday that he and
colleagues had begun sketching out designs for a larger Mars helicopter capable
of carrying some 5kg of science equipment.
The Ingenuity team has little time to spare to complete its test
program. NASA allocated only 30 Martian days — about 31 Earth days — for up to
five test flights. Then the rover, its link to Earth, will head off to start
its main mission of searching for signs of past life in a dried-up river delta
along the rim of the crater.
The engineers lost a week diagnosing a problem that stopped the
Ingenuity’s computer from switching into “flight mode.” Adjusting the commands
sent from Earth to Mars appears to have solved the problem.
The remaining flights are to further stretch Ingenuity to its
limits.
MiMi Aung, the project’s manager, said Monday that she hoped that on
its last flight, the helicopter may travel as far as 1,043kg from its starting
point.
Other activities on Perseverance are also gearing up. NASA
reported Wednesday the success of an oxygen-generation experiment on the rover
called
MOXIE. The device broke apart carbon dioxide molecules in the Martian
air. That advance will be crucial for future astronauts arriving from Earth —
both to create something for them to breathe and to generate propellant for
their return to Earth.
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