by Designed to fly five times over 30 days, NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter lasted nearly three years, soaring across the surface of Mars and logging 72 flights before a hard or tilted landing that damaged one or more rotors forced the mission’s flight controllers to marathon to finally give. to close.
Just as the Wright brothers opened the skies on Earth… we all believe Ingenuity has done the same for Mars, and we couldn’t be more proud of our tough little rover,” Teddy Tzanetos, Ingenuity project manager by NASA. Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, said Thursday.
“Although Ingenuity will not fly again, the new generations of Mars helicopters are on the drawing board, and we are excited about what the future holds in the skies of Mars.”
Weighing just 4 pounds off the scales, Ingenuity was built at JPL and transported to Mars attached to NASA’s Perseverance rover, which landed on the Red Planet on February 18, 2021. To keep costs down, the helicopter was solar powered built with mostly off-the-shelf components.
Shortly after the rover landed on the floor of Jezero Crater, the helicopter fell to the surface and on April 19, 2021, it took off on the the first of five planned test flights to demonstrate the feasibility of flight in the thin Martian atmosphere.
On Earth, helicopters typically can’t generate enough lift to fly above about 25,000 feet, said JPL Director Laurie Leshin. On Mars, she said, the atmosphere is roughly equivalent to an altitude of 80,000 to 90,000 feet on Earth.
Citing a tongue-in-cheek engineering maxim, Leshin said Ingenuity went through the “three phases of bold thinking.”
“First, it’s a joke. Second, it’s violently opposed. And third, it’s assumed to be self-evident,” she said. “And in this case, it was the bold idea that we could fly a helicopter on Mars … a place where nobody thought it was possible.”
The mission requirement required only five flights, but the engineers expected the small drone to exceed expectations, and it did just that. After the seventh flight, NASA began using it as a scout for Persistence, flying forward and sending images of upcoming routes to mission planners at JPL.
And so, for weeks, then monthsand finally for almost three years, Ingenuity soldiered on, making repeated trips above the floor of Crater Jezero where Perseverance is looking for signs of habitability in the past, and storing rock and soil samples to return to Earth .
But on January 18, shortly after Ingenuity made an emergency landing at the end of its 71st flight, controllers sent orders for a short vertical flight to determine its exact location in relatively featureless terrain.
That terrain, with few surface landmarks, may have confused Ingenuity’s flight computer and prompted Flight 71 to quickly terminate, then stand by instructions from Earth.
In any case, the helicopter took off on flight 72 as planned, reaching an altitude of 40 feet. It stayed for 4.5 seconds and then started to land.
But at a height of 3 feet or so, Ingenuity fell out of touch with flight controllers. Communications were restored the next day, and images arriving on Earth a few days later showed that at least one of its high-speed rotors had been damaged, probably from a crash landing.
The outer 25% to 35% of helicopter rotors generate the lion’s share of lift, and the blades must be balanced with high precision to avoid catastrophic vibrations. A photograph showing the shadow of one rotor showed that its tip had been torn off, probably from an impact on the Martian surface.
“Because we think we lost about 25% of one of the blades, that means we just lost a huge chunk of our thrust capacity,” Tzanetos told reporters. Even if the blades were perfectly balanced despite the damage, Ingenuity’s ability to precisely control roll and pitch would be affected.
“So that all means we won’t be able to fly anymore,” Tzanetos said.
Thursday night marked 1,000 slightly longer Martian days, or sols, since Ingenuity crashed onto the surface of the Red Planet. Engineers stay in radio contact and may try to rotate the blades briefly to get a better view of the rotors. But eventually, as Persistence continues to explore and move further and further away, touch will be lost.
With an unexpected long mission like Ingenuity “there’s always that bit in the back of your head, you know, maybe today is the last day,” Tzanetos said. “…so the opening moment was, of course, of sadness, to see that photo come down and pop on the screen.
“But happiness and a sense of celebration instead come very quickly at what we have achieved. Her journey has been amazing and every one of those sols is worth celebrating.”
The dish: A Vietnamese-inspired pork noodle meal
What an increase in the child tax credit could mean for parents
Jon Stewart returning to “The Daily Show” through the 2024 election
