The Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, the first drone to fly on another planet, has completed its mission. The helicopter’s journey concluded after flying for 128 minutes on the red planet, covering a total distance of 18 kilometers. On January 25th, 2024, the small but mighty drone officially powered down its engine after setting a trail of records, affirming the leadership position of the U.S. in the frontier of science and space exploration.
During its 72nd flight, on January 18h, 2024, the sandy featureless terrain proved difficult for the helicopter’s navigation system to track, resulting in a rough landing. While the helicopter remains upright and in communication with ground controllers, images of this last flight indicate one or more of its rotor blades sustained damage during landing and it is no longer capable of flight.
Like the Wright brothers did on earth, Ingenuity has proven that powered, controlled flight is possible on other planets
NASA Administrator Bill Nelson
“The historic journey of Ingenuity, the little helicopter that could, and kept saying I think I can, I think I can, has come to end,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. “What the remarkable helicopter achieved far exceeds what we thought was possible. Through missions like Ingenuity, NASA is paving the way for future flight in our solar system and smarter, safer human exploration to Mars and beyond.”
Small Drone, Ingenious design
The mighty helicopter weighs 1.8 kg on Earth and stands at 0.49 meters in height. On Mars, the helicopter weighs just 0.7 kilograms. While Mars has 62.5% of Earth’s gravity, its atmosphere is only 1% as dense, representing a significant challenge for flight. Taking off from the surface of Mars is the equivalent of flying at an altitude of 30,000 meter on Earth. No terrestrial helicopter has ever flown that high. This is why engineers equipped Ingenuity with counter-rotating carbon-fiber blades that span about 1.2 meters and spin at 2400 revolutions per minute (RPM), five times faster than those of a regular helicopter on Earth.
Ingenuity’s battery is built from six lithium cells from Sony, known as VTC4 cells, which have been ‘tried and tested’ in many power tools here on Earth. Ingenuity is also equipped with a solar panel to charge its battery on its own. Ingenuity relies on its battery pack to store enough energy to keep it warm through the extremely cold Martian nights (-90 degrees Celsius).
“Ingenuity can’t afford to keep the temperature of its interior at 7 degrees Celsius; that takes too much precious energy from the battery,” said Bob Balaram, Chief Engineer for the Mars Helicopter Project at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “Ingenuity maintains its temperature at about -15 degrees Celsius, allowing the drone to survive the extreme cold of Martian nights.”
In fact, most of the power stored in Ingenuity’s battery is used just to heat the battery itself and other components to avoid the catastrophic failure of these electronics. “The remaining power enables Ingenuity to stay airborne for a maximum of 90 seconds each day,” said Ingenuity Project Manager MiMi Aung, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in an interview with Veritasium.
In addition, flight controllers at NASA cannot control the helicopter with a joystick. It takes at least 20 minutes for a command beamed from mission control on Earth to reach Mars. Commands are sent well in advance, and Ingenuity flies autonomously based on these commands. It makes its own decisions regarding how to stays on the path programmed by project engineers by analyzing photos taken by its downward-facing navigation camera. Collected data comes back from the helicopter long after each flight takes place.
“There’s a lot of complex gear packed into Ingenuity’s small body,” said Ingenuity Project Manager MiMi Aung, of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “A Mars helicopter mission like this wasn’t possible until recently when electronics became sufficiently miniaturized. There’s so much gear, all of it together, to be that light; we just couldn’t do it 15 or 20 years ago.”
Collaboration with Qualcomm
To navigate on a planet without a GPS system, such as Mars, Ingenuity employs Terrain Relative Navigation. As the helicopter flies over the Martian surface, it captures images of the ground below. By analyzing these pictures, it identifies features such as stones and edges within its field of view. The shifting edges in the images assist Ingenuity in navigating the terrain.
To process terrain pictures as it flies over Mars, Ingenuity needed to pack a lot of computing power while remaining lightweight. For that, NASA engineers ditched traditional, space-rated hardware because they just couldn’t afford the heavy mass penalty. Instead, they opted for commercial processors adapted for drone usage by Qualcomm, an American multinational corporation specialized in creating semiconductors, software, and services related to wireless technology such as 4G and 5G. Qualcomm is most known for its Qualcomm Flight Platform.
“The processor on Ingenuity is 100 times more powerful than everything JPL has sent into deep space, combined,” said Ingenuity’s Project Manager, Teddy Tzanetos of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). “Ingenuity uses a processor designed by Qualcomm, the Snapdragon 801 processor. It is a smartphone computer chip from the 2015 era, weighing only 14 grams.”
And it worked! Radiation didn’t fry the Qualcomm processor!
Collaboration with AeroVironment
The success of record-setting Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, was also co-designed and co-developed by AeroVironment, an American defense contractor specialized in manufacturing military-grade drone. “The company has created some high-altitude planes for NASA and has a history of designing ‘weird aerial robotics’ for the Department of Defense and others,” said Ben Pipenberg, Lead Engineer on Ingenuity Program at AeroVironment. “There is a lot of crossover between high-altitude flying on Earth and low altitude flying on Mars,” he explained. His team designed most of the hardware for Ingenuity.
“The early prototypes flew well in Earth’s atmosphere, but they were completely uncontrollable when we tested them in NASA’ JPL space simulator,” — a 24 meters tall and 7 meters wide chamber where engineers can control the precise density of the air, Pipenberg said. “We just destroyed the prototypes every time, hitting the walls, hitting the floors, the blades flying everywhere.”
In the winter of 2018, two years after they flew these prototypes in the space simulator, AeroVironment had a final design for Ingenuity. “The rotor blades are 1.2 meter in diameter, made out of carbon fiber, and they spin five times faster than they would if they had been designed to work on Earth,” Pipenberg said. “If you tried to run this helicopter on Earth, it wouldn’t be able to fly. It would be like trying to drive a car at five miles per hour in fifth gear.”
Leading the Space Race
After a groundbreaking journey, the Mars helicopter, powered down its engine. The small but mighty drone not only pioneered celestial flight records but also cemented the United States’ preeminence in the forefront of science and space exploration. While China, India and Japan are still struggling to prove their technological capabilities by landing on the moon, 384,400 km from Earth. The US is succeeding their objectives on Mars, which is between 55,7 million to 401,3 million kilometres from Earth. The US remains the only country to have landed not only one, but five spacecraft on Mars.
For more information on Ingenuity, go to: https://mars.nasa.gov/ingenuity
Sources:
NASA: Mars Exploration Program
NASA: Ingenuiy the Mars Helicopter
NASA: Ingenuity Helicopter Mission Ends
Inside Unmanned Systems: Inside Ingenuity with Aerovironment
Los Angeles Daily News: Meet the Makers of Ingenuity
I keep hearing about these special stars, called Pulsars. Why are they different from other stars? Can you provide information about Pulsars ? Thank you.
Thank you, User 007, for entrusting our team with your question. We very much hope the following answer will satisfy your curiosity.
https://savytoday.com/what-is-a-pulsar/