No, this isn’t an idea for a new science fiction movie. We (as in NASA) are flying a helicopter on Mars. As helicopters go, this is sized more like a drone you might buy on Amazon, but still, you don’t have to be too much of a science geek to think this is pretty awesome.
Perseverance
We wrote a story about the thrilling (seriously) landing of the latest Mars rover Perseverance, back on February 18, 2021. It was a huge moment for a mission that launched on July 30, 2020 and was live-streamed around the world. While the landing itself may have felt like the culmination of the mission, it is really just one very important step in the full mission and overall Mars Exploration Program.
Now that Perseverance has had over a month on the surface of Mars, the next steps in the science have begun taking shape. One of the most interesting is the use of Ingenuity, the first helicopter to fly on another planet. While Ingenuity will help with some scientific tests, it was in large part a high-risk, high-reward proof of concept that a helicopter style vehicle could fly in the Mars atmosphere.
Ingenuity
One of the biggest challenges and now biggest success stories of the Ingenuity is the ability to fly in a very different atmosphere than what we have on Earth. It’s easy to look at some of the photos and now videos from the surface of Mars and see it as very Earth-like. But, of course looks can be deceiving and the Mars atmospher is very different. For Ingenuity, the big hurdle is that the atmosphere of Mars is only about 1/100 as dense as on Earth. So, that makes it far more difficult to generate lift for flight. This is partially offset by the lower gravity on Mars (one third of Earth’s). When you run the calculations, taking off from the surface of Mars is like flying at 30,000 feet on Earth. No helicopter on Earth has ever flown that high.
Liftoff
On April 19, 2021, Ingenuity completed its first very short, but successful takeoff and hover on Mars. On April 22, it flew its second mission, reaching a height of about 10 feet, hovering, taking a few turns and then returning to the surface, snapping pictures along the way.
After the successful landing of the Perseverance river, using entirely new technology (a crane? seriously?) the initial success of Ingenuity just makes this Mars exploration mission that much more impressive. We can’t wait to see what comes next.
