NASA says that their helicopter on Mars is ready for the historic first flight

18.04.2021 0 By Chilli.Pepper

This is all experimental, so it is quite possible that "Inventiveness" will fail.

NASA's Ingenuity Mars helicopter is shown here in close-up taken by Mastcam-Z, a pair of zoom cameras aboard the Perseverance rover.

NASA decided problems with his Ingenuity helicopter on the surface of Mars and ready to fly.

On Saturday, the space agency announced that it would try to launch a small helicopter weighing 1,8 kg early Monday morning. The first flight is scheduled for 3:30 a.m. Eastern Time (07:30 UTC). It will take several hours to transfer data from the helicopter to the Perseverance rover, and then to the orbital satellite and back to Earth. So, NASA expects to receive the first data from Mars sometime after 6:15 am EST.

At this time, the space agency will start a live broadcast, in which they will share any photos and reactions of scientists and engineers when people try to drive a vehicle in another world for the first time.

NASA originally planned to launch Ingenuity about a week ago, but during pre-flight tests, engineers ran into a problem. When the engineers sent the helicopter a command to check the rotation of two blades rotating in opposite directions, each of which has a length of 1,2 meters, a problem prevented the test.

Since then, the mission team, led by project manager MiMy Aung of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, has been working on a software fix that resulted in several commands being added to the flight sequence. Since this was a software change that had been in a stable configuration for about two years, comprehensive testing and validation was required before being sent to the helicopter.

But the software patch seems to have worked, because on Friday the helicopter completed a full-speed spin test, which made it possible to make a historic flight. For this first flight, Ingenuity will rise a couple of meters above the ground, hover in the air for about 20 to 30 seconds, and then land. It is noteworthy that the first flight of the Wright brothers' plane lasted 12 seconds.

If this test flight is successful, NASA will become bolder in future forays, eventually flying the helicopter up to 300 meters at a time.

This is all experimental, so it is quite possible that "Inventiveness" will fail. But NASA deserves praise for taking the risk to slightly expand the boundaries of research. And, trying to fly to Mars, NASA will collect valuable data for an ambitious mission to Titan, Dragonfly, which will try to jump over the mysterious sand dunes of the satellite in about ten years.