Ingenuity Is Ready To Take Off On Mars

The Mars helicopter will have its maiden flight after the 18th of April. Find out more about the helicopter and what will happen on the day.

Perseverance the mars rover has dropped Ingenuity onto the surface of Mars. Ingenuity is a helicopter and will be ready for its Maiden flight on Mars as soon as tests have been completed.

Ingenuity had gone through testing its rotor blades and everything was looking good. But an issue with a timer caused the test to shut down early. Sunday 11th April flight has been put back to no earlier than the 18th of April. This gives NASA some time to look at what caused the problem. There doesn’t seem to be an issue with any of the hardware as it looks healthy. It is most likely a software issue.

The watchdog timer oversees the command sequence and alerts the system to any potential issues. It helps the system stay safe by not proceeding if an issue is observed and worked as planned. NASA

As of the 13th of April, the issue has been solved. But testing needs to be done before uploading to the helicopter. The modified software will ensure that the process is smooth when booting. Enabling the hardware and software to have a safe transition to the flight software. Before then lots of tests will be done before uploading, hence the delay.

Good news, on the 16th of April, NASA received back confirmation that Ingenunity had completed the high-speed test. This means that the helicopter is GO for its first flight on the 19th. They are expecting the flight to happen at approximately 3.30am (EDT) on the 19th. As the data takes a couple of hours to return to earth, they have scheduled a press conference for 6.15am (EDT) to announce the news.

What will happen on the first flight?

The helicopter will start its blades and spin at 2,537 RPM. It will then fly, ascend 3 meters vertically, hover for 30 seconds before descending to the ground. Once completed, then the process of sending the data back to earth commences.

Perseverance will download the first set of engineering data from Ingenuity after a couple of hours. This will determine whether it's been a success. Further images and video will follow in the days after.

Surviving the night

Forty-four days after landing, the helicopter was set free onto the Martian surface. It’s been underneath the Perseverance rover for a year or so, all the legs/catches released without a hitch.

Once lowered the rover moved away from the helicopter. It needed to recharge its batteries using the solar cells on top. And had to survive the harsh Martian night where the temperature can go down to minus 135c.

At these temperatures, it can freeze and crack the electronics. To stop this it needed to use a heater overnight to keep itself warm. Ingenuity survived its first night.

Batteries

The helicopters only source of power is four lithium-ion batteries. These need charging up by the solar cells each day. The batteries produce 24 volts, and as mentioned needs to keep Ingenuity warm during the night. And produce enough power for flight and communications.

The tricky part is managing power, the flights need to take place before or around midday. It will then have enough time to recharge the batteries for the night.

Getting ready

Now that it survived the night, Ingenuity will need to unclipped its blades and then rotate them. After completing these tests, the blades will spin at their top speed without taking off. It will then be ready for the first flight.

The difficulties of flight on Mars shouldn’t be underestimated. With the atmosphere a mere 1% of the earth the blades need to give a lot more lift.

And remember this is a test flight, a proof of concept. If it works it will be a big moment for NASA. New future helicopters, bigger and better will fly on Mars.

Taking a selfie with Ingenuity

On sol 46 (day 46 on Mars) Perseverance took a cool selfie shot of itself and Ingenuity. Pointing the robotic arms camera at itself it took the shot below. Using the WATSON (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering) camera on the SHERLOC (Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals) instrument, located at the end of the rover’s long robotic arm.

The image is made up of 62 photographs stitched together. Here is a good write up of how selfies are taken on the rover. It is very complex.

Wright brothers moment

When Ingenuity takes off this will be the Wright brothers moment. A powered flight on another planet is a success! In honour of the Wright brothers, there is a piece of the material from the original plane stuck to the helicopter.

The technology used on Ingenuity is mainly off the shelf parts and the software that runs everything is run on Linux. Read more on my previous article on Mars helicopter 10 interesting facts.

Thanks for reading, my next article hopefully will be about the successful flight next week.

Sources: https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter/ https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter/status/290/work-progresses-toward-ingenuity-s-first-flight-on-mars/