NASA all set to land first tiny helicopter on Mars

(Karachi) A century after developing the first powered flight on Earth, NASA intends to land the first tiny helicopter on Mars, local media reported on Wednesday.

The helicopter has been nicknamed Ingenuity and weighs four pound. It will provide an important technology demonstration proving if a future, more expansive mission using similar hardware would work.

The Ingenuity helicopter will overcome several challenges including the rarefied Martian atmosphere, which is just one percent the density of Earth's.

Key features

The Ingenuity is similar to a mini-drone weighing just four pounds (1.8 kilograms). The helicopter consists of large blades and spin about five times faster —2,400 revolutions per minute—than would be required to generate the same amount of lift back on Earth.

The copters body is four feet long shaped like a box with four carbon-fiber blades arranged in two rotors spinning in opposite directions. It comes with two cameras, computers, and navigation sensors.

It's also equipped with solar cells to recharge its batteries, much of the energy being used for staying warm on cold Martian nights, where temperatures fall to minus 130 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 90 degrees Celsius).

90 second flights

Up to five flights of gradual difficulty are planned, over a window of one month, within the first few months of the mission.

Ingenuity will fly at altitudes of 10-15 feet (3-5 meters) and travel as far as 160 feet (50 meters) from its starting area and back.

Each flight will last up to a minute and half—compared to the 12 seconds the Wright brothers achieved with the first powered, controlled flight in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina in 1903.

Like the Perseverance rover, Ingenuity is too far away from Earth to be operated using a joystick, and is therefore designed to fly autonomously. Its onboard computers will work with its sensors and cameras to keep it on a path programmed by its engineers.

Objective

As per NASA, Ingenuity's mission is a "technology demonstration" that aims to test a new capability together with the astrobiology mission of Perseverance. It could even help carry light payloads from one site to another—such as the rock and soil samples Perseverance will be collecting in the next phase of the Mars 2020 mission.