The Mars Helicopter named “INGENUITY” was a small aircraft carried to the surface of the Red Planet attached to the Perseverance rover. Ingenuity’s mission was to test the mars atmosphere for flying environment in order for future human missions to mars.
When was it launched?
The ingenuity helicopter was deployed on the surface on 4th of April 2021. And on 19th of April it became the first ever aircraft in the history to make a successful flight on planet other than Earth.
What is challenging part?
Flight at Mars is challenging because the Red Planet has a significantly lower gravity – one-third that of Earth’s – and an extremely thin atmosphere with only 1% the pressure at the surface compared to our planet. This means there is relatively few air molecules with which Ingenuity’s two 4-foot-wide (1.2-meter-wide) rotor blades can interact to achieve flight.
How it is flown?
Well if you are imagining a flight like a drone operating using a joystick. Here that principle doesn’t works, oops. Ingenuity cannot be flown with a joystick, and its flights are not observable from Earth in real time.
The aircraft’s flights are autonomous – piloted by on board guidance, navigation, and control systems running algorithms developed by the team at NASA. Isn’t it fascinating how we literally flew an aircraft just by sitting lakhs of km through the space!
The whole space flight was assisted by the perseverance rover. Perseverance was the rover accompanying through the mission from earth to mars and to the infinity….
What did we found?
The data from these flights is being used to help take decisions relating to considering small helicopters for the role in the distant future, Mars helicopters might even help astronauts explore the Red Planet.
Also
The ingenuity’s images are being used to directly support the Perseverance rover’s exploration of Jezero Crater. The team of scientists is finding pictures from an aerial perspective that would help in understanding the geological features and more locations to explore and find mind blowing facts about mars.
Jezero Crater :
Some highlights:
The helicopter has achieved a maximum altitude of 40 feet (12 meters) and hovered for 4.5 seconds before starting its descent at a velocity of 3.3 feet per second (1 meter per second).
Originally designed it was estimated to perform up to five experimental test flights over 30 days, the first aircraft on another world operated from the Martian surface for almost three years, performed 72 flights, and flew more than 14 times farther than planned while logging more than two hours of total flight time.
Image taken by Ingenuity while one of it’s flight:
Is Ingenuity still working?
On January 25, 2024 after ingenuity took its 72nd flight, it was concluded that the rotor blades are damaged at the tips and won’t be able to function fully. And so NASA administrator announced the end of the beautiful mission.
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