NASA’s Perseverance is gearing up to release the Ingenuity helicopter that will conduct the first controlled flights on Mars. NASA is targeting no earlier than April 8 for this event. Ingenuity will fly nine feet into the air, hover in place for 30 seconds before landing.
The deployment of Ingenuity from the belly of Perseverance will take about six sols to complete. From there the rotor copter will have to meet a series of milestones before attempting its first flight.
Perseverance is currently trekking to the first airfield on another planet, which is a 33-by-33-foot piece of Martian real estate, and once it reaches the targeted area, the rover will release the four-pound rotorcraft from its belly. It will first spend up to 60 days charging to the Perseverance rover, before release. If it survives the hard -90C Martian night, NASA will make the first flight attempt within 30 days.
If the rotorcraft lands successfully and remains operable, up to four more flights could be attempted.
Farah Alibay, Mars Helicopter integration lead for the Perseverance rover, said: ‘Most of all I think of it [Ingenuity] as an experimental aircraft and this started with the Wright Brothers who brought aerial mobility to travel here on earth in the same way we are hoping ingenuity on Mars.’
Bob Balaram, Mars Helicopter chief engineer at JPL, said: ‘Once we cut the cord with Perseverance and drop those final five inches to the surface, we want to have our big friend drive away as quickly as possible so we can get the Sun’s rays on our solar panel and begin recharging our batteries.’
It will take about six sol, or six days and four hours Earth time, before the two separate. This involves the rover team working with Ingenuity’s operators to change the position before release.
MiMi Aung, project manager for Ingenuity Mars Helicopter at JPL, said:’ Ingenuity is an experimental engineering flight test – we want to see if we can fly at Mars.’
‘There are no science instruments on-board and no goals to obtain scientific information. We are confident that all the engineering data we want to obtain both can be done within this 30-sol window.’
Source: Daily Mail