Engineers announced Tuesday that NASA has locked a location on Mars for the first demo flight of its mini-helicopter named Tact. The four-pound rotorcraft is set to attempt its first powered flight to another planet, demonstrating new capabilities that could unlock access to hard-to-reach areas of other space objects in the future.
The ingenuity reached Mars in February, clinging to the belly of the Perseverance Rover, it survived a seven-month journey through the Martian atmosphere into deep space and a seven-minute intense landing sequence. Within hours of the Perseverance landing, engineers began analyzing the orbital image to find the main flight zone to leave ingenuity for its first flight – “the area where the helicopter is safe to fly, and the helicopter is safe to land.” , Said Howard Grip.
He said the landing site needs to be free of flats and any large rocks that could threaten the flight demo of ingenuity. But it also has “texture” – special features on the ground that the helicopter’s AI-powered navigation camera can detect its whereabouts during flight. Immediately after landing, “We began to realize that there might be a really great airfield right in front of our noses.” Grip told reporters at a press briefing on Tuesday.
Stay steadfast in the midst of a one-day drive to the flight zone just 196 feet away from the flight site. When it arrives, the craft will be lowered to the ground. Patience will then spend about 25 hours at a driving location 330 feet away, which has been renamed Van Zill Overlook by NASA in tribute to senior jet propulsion laboratory scientist Jacob Van Zyl who died last year.
Leaving ingenuity in his flying field is a “very determined and cautious process,” said Farah Ra Alibe, who leads the integration of ingenuity with patience. He said the ingenuity would have to shift from its current horizontal position to an even position on the rover before touching the ground, which would take “multiple days”. “At least the most stressful day for me is going to be the last day when we will finally separate the helicopter and leave the ingenuity on the ground.”
Lockheed Martin has designed a Mars helicopter delivery system that will help ingeniously land small landing feet. Keeping a delivery system lightweight while safe was also a major challenge for Lockheed, which has many decades of experience designing space systems. “We had to put aside all that legacy and knowledge and literally start from scratch with a new electrical connection design,” said Jeremy Moore, the top engineer for the deployment system. Edge In an interview.
Once on the ground, NASA engineers expect the ingenuity to test its first flight before April 8th, giving or taking a few days depending on the weather on Mars. The helicopter’s flight zone is shaped like a mini ringing track, with a B-box-shaped takeoff and return area on one side of the zone. “The first flight is special – it’s the most important flight we’ve ever had,” Grip said, adding that a successful first flight would mean “complete mission success.”
For that inaugural flight, the ingenuity will be about 10 feet (3 m) above the ch, she, hovering in place for about 30 seconds, turning midway, and then landing for landing. It will be completely autonomous, managing orders sent by engineers to Earth the day before. A 0.5-megapixel navigation on the underside of the Ingunity K. Myro will break 30 seconds per photo of the ground to report its movement.
The second, more powerful camera in the ingenuity is the Marrow with a horizon of 13 megapixels. It will take pictures in the mediator, while the diligent morning camera aims to capture the helicopter in flight. All those pictures will eventually spread back to Earth.
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Four more flight tests are planned in a month-long window after the first 10-foot takeoff of ingenuity. What the helicopter does during those flight tests is largely based on the results of the first. “It could, in principle, be much higher as currently designed,” Gripp said. “There may be cases where, if everything goes well during our trivial flights, we can pull a few things off the trivial flight.”
After that, the ingenuity test campaign is likely to come to an end. It is a demo mission, and there are other objectives of the opinion, such as collecting Martian clay samples for future Mars missions to bring it back to Earth.
If successful, the ingenuity will mark the first operated flight in another world. In the 1980s, the Soviet Union won the title for its first off-world flight with two balloon robots (not powered) in the clouds of Venus in its mission to Venus under the Vega program. In World Helicopters, if proven practical, could be used in future missions on track locations where wheeled rovers cannot reach caves, tunnels or mountain ranges.
Before the first flight of ingenuity, engineers are already celebrating to make it yet. A small, four-pound helicopter could survive a voyage from Earth to Mars, said Kahid engineer More. “You have to launch a rocket while carrying a carbon fiber feather. This has never been done before, “he said of a mission like this.
