After some long-range troubleshooting, NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter will attempt its first flight to another world on Monday in demonstrations that could open the door to a new era of interplanetary aerial reconnaissance.
Engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California sent orders for an Ingenuity test flight on Sunday, paving the way for takeoff in short up and down jumps at 3:31 a.m. EDT (0731 GMT) on Monday.
It took about three hours for the ground team to receive data confirming the flight results. The signal will bounce from the helicopter to the persistent rover, which launched the drone onto the surface of Mars on April 3, and then to the orbiter flying overhead to transmit data back to Earth.
NASA TV will broadcast live coverage of the JPL Operations Center starting at 6:15 a.m. EDT (1015 GMT) Monday as officials await data on the outcome of Ingenuity’s leap. Once the data starts flowing, technicians will analyze the signal for alarm signals that the helicopter was successfully picked up and landed.
Then, images will begin to flow back to Earth from cameras on the plane, and cameras in the Tenacity Wagon monitor the flight from a distance of about 200 feet (60 meters).
NASA officials estimate Monday’s fully automated flight will take about 40 seconds as the drone takes off at about 10 feet (3 meters), hovers briefly there, then turns to signal in a different direction before landing again on four carbons. Fiber legs.
The first images from the helicopter’s black and white navigation camera were able to return to Earth shortly after Monday’s flight test. Then the vehicle will sleep and recharge the battery before sending a color image.
Meanwhile, the high-resolution magnifying camera on the Perseverance cruiser mast will try to capture still images and video of the helicopter.
“We are very excited,” said Tim Canham, Head of Intelligence Operations at JPL. “This could be an extraordinary day. We were all nervous, but we believed that we were giving the job and time, and had the right people to do the job. “
If the first flight is as successful as NASA hopes, Ingenuity could fly four more times in the following weeks, trying to catch a glimpse of the flight more boldly before ending next month’s test flight campaign. Then NASA wants to free up perseverance to continue its main science mission of finding and collecting Martian rock samples to eventually return to Earth.
Lori Glaze, head of NASA’s Department of Planetary Science, describes the Innovation Helicopter as a “high-risk, high reward” experiment that could pave the way for future air vehicles to explore Mars and other planets.
The mass of the $ 80 million Ingenuity helicopter is just 1.8 kilograms. It weighs 4 pounds on Earth, or 1.5 pounds in the gravity of Mars, but its light blade must generate an atmospheric lift less than 1% of Earth’s density at sea level.
Bobby Brown, director of planetary science at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said the helicopter and its support team on Earth would try to produce “Wright Brothers moments” in other worlds.
In recognition of Ingenuity’s other first aviators, NASA installed a piece of cloth the size of a postage stamp from the Wright Brothers’ first aircraft, known as the Flyer, on the Mars helicopter. Cloth covers one of the aircraft’s wings during its maiden flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, on December 17, 1903.
Another piece of cloth and a piece of firewood from the Wright Flyer flew to the moon on the Apollo 11 mission in 1969. While the Wright brothers used cloth and wood for their airplane, their creativity was made of carbon fiber leather and “exotic metal,” said Bob Palram, chief engineer. from Ingenuity at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Thomas Zurbuchen, Head of Science at NASA, described Ingenuity’s first flight attempt as “a historic analogous moment in 1903 – where flight control was exercised on another planet.”
Since diligently deploying the Ingenuity helicopter from its belly earlier this month, it has proven it can recharge its battery using solar panels, and stay warm on cold Mars nights. The ground team also sent orders to open the rotor blades, which extended approximately 4 feet (1.2 meters) from end to end, for a 50 rpm low-speed spin test.
But there was a problem that caused the drone’s rotor start-up sequence to shorten to the surface of Mars while trying to orbit at high speed on April 9. The Ingenuity anti-spin knife rapid spin test was supposed to be a last resort before officials took the first helicopter flight. Then scheduled for April 11.
The command sequence for the high-speed rotation test ended early when the helicopter tried to switch the flight computer from “pre-flight” to “flight” mode, according to NASA. The timer control system designed to keep an eye on the chain of command before completion of the rotation test has expired, resulting in the premature termination of the helicopter rotation test.
The team at JPL has devised two tactics to solve the command sequence problem. One approach involves modifying the command sequence to “time” the helicopter’s transition from pre-flight to flight mode, according to MiMi Aung, Ingenuity Project Manager.
Another solution is to disable movement and delay the helicopter’s first flight. That option is to reinstall the modified software on the Ingenuity flight computer, replacing code that has worked perfectly for helicopters for nearly two years, Ong wrote in a post on the NASA website.
The flight experience with the modified command sequence was easier, and on Friday successfully passed the helicopter rotor high-speed spin test to nearly 2,500 rpm. The tests indicated that the solution would allow the helicopter to switch to flight mode and take off in 85% of attempts
“We also know that if the first attempt on Monday is unsuccessful, we can try this command again, with a good chance that subsequent attempts in the following days will be successful even if the first attempt was unsuccessful,” wrote Ong. “For this reason, we chose to follow this path.”
Meanwhile, the team in the field is constantly looking for backup options to update the Ingenuity software. The new software has been linked to the Perseverance rover, which can transmit the code to Ingenuity via a Rover-to-helicopter radio communication link if needed.
“If our initial approaches to flying are unsuccessful,” wrote Ong, “explorers will send new flight control software to the helicopters.” “We will then need a few days of additional preparation to upload and test the new software at Ingenuity, retest the rotors in this new configuration, and recycle for the first flight trials.”
Ong compared the flight test attempt to a missile launch.
“We are doing everything we can to make it work, but we also know that we may have to clean up and try again,” he wrote. “In engineering, there is always uncertainty, but that’s what makes working on advanced technology so interesting and rewarding. We must continue to innovate and develop solutions to new challenges. And trying things other people only dream of. “
Ong wrote: “Creativity is a technological experience.” “Therefore, our plan is to move things forward and learn by doing. We take risks that other missions cannot, and we evaluate each step with care. “
If all worked out, the carbon fiber propellers would spin about 40 times per second to lift the Ingenuity helicopter off the ground. The propellers themselves had a mass of only 35 gain, or more than an ounce, and had to spin faster than the helicopters on the ground.
“A helicopter flies by generating lift,” said Ong. “On Earth, this is done by pushing air, so the blades push the air and lift is generated. On Mars, where the density of the atmosphere is very weak – about 1% compared to here – there are substantially fewer particles that should exist. push. That means it has to. “We have to compensate … we have to spin faster than we do on the ground.”
The extremely light helicopter, combined with a lightning-fast control algorithm to match the flight of an airplane 500 times per second, requires advanced materials and computational capabilities.
“We haven’t been able to do that in 15 or 20 years,” said Ong.
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