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The first helicopter on Mars is officially on Martian soil.
NASA’s Mars Ingenuity helicopter landed on the surface of the Red Planet after being launched by its mothership, the Perseverance rover, the space agency announced Saturday night (April 4). It’s just over a week until the helicopter’s first flight.
“#MarsHelicopter landing confirmed! His 293 million mile (471 million kilometer) journey aboard @NASAPersevere ended with the final 4-inch (10 cm) drop from the rover’s belly to the surface of Mars today,” they said. officials from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California wrote in a Twitter ad. “Next milestone? Survive the night.”
Video: Watch NASA’s helicopter on Mars unfold like a butterfly
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Weighing in at just 4 pounds. (1.8 kilograms), Ingenuity is a tiny solar-powered helicopter that relies on a rechargeable battery to keep its systems warm during the harsh Martian night. To this day, the device has attached itself to Perseverance’s belly, feeding on the rover’s nuclear propulsion system to keep warm.
Now the helicopter is using its internal battery to power a vital heater.
“This heater keeps the interior at about 45 degrees F during the intense cold of the Martian night, where temperatures can drop to -130 F (minus 90 degrees Celsius)”, Bob Balaram of NASA, chief engineer of the Mars Helicopter project. he wrote in a status update on Friday (April 2). “That comfortably protects key components like the battery and some of the sensitive electronics from damage in very cold temperatures.”
Ingenuity is expected to make its maiden flight on April 11, and data from that test will reach Earth on April 12, NASA officials said. The $ 85 million drone is the first helicopter sent to another world and is designed to test technologies for future flying vehicles on other planets. Ingenuity carries two cameras to document its flights, which will also be observed by the Perseverance rover.
If all goes well, Ingenuity will make a series of increasingly long flights over Jezero crater (where the Perseverance rover landed on February 18) over the next 31 Martian days, which are called suns. Each flight must not reach more than 16.5 feet (5 m) and will be performed over a flight range of 300 feet (90 m) long.
NASA plans a series of tests before that first flight to ignite Ingenuity’s four rotor blades (spinning at up to 2,537 revolutions per minute) while Perseverance watches from a safe distance. The rover will be parked at a safe distance of 16.5 feet from the drone before the first flight.
In pictures: NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover on the Red Planet
But first, of course, Ingenuity must survive the bitter cold of her first night alone on Mars. The helicopter battery will power your heater enough to maintain a constant temperature of approximately 5 degrees F (minus 15 degrees C).
“The Ingenuity team will be eagerly awaiting news from the helicopter the next day,” Balaram wrote on Friday. “Did you stay overnight? Is the solar panel working as expected?”
Mission team members will closely monitor the temperature and performance of Ingenuity’s battery over the weekend to ensure the helicopter is in good condition, Balaram added. If everything looks good, Ingenuity can move on to its rotor tests and other system checks before the first flight, he said.
As novel as Ingenuity is, the helicopter is just part of NASA’s Perseverance rover’s ambitious mission to explore an ancient delta in the Jezero crater on Mars. The rover is expected to spend the next two years scouting the area for signs of ancient life. Perseverance will also collect rock samples from Mars to be collected and returned to Earth on a later mission.
Email Tariq Malik at [email protected] or follow him at @tariqjmalik. Follow us on @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Instagram.
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