{"id":15080,"date":"2020-06-25T16:46:00","date_gmt":"2020-06-25T13:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/how-nasas-mars-helicopter-will-reach-the-red-planets-surface\/"},"modified":"2020-06-25T16:46:00","modified_gmt":"2020-06-25T13:46:00","slug":"how-nasas-mars-helicopter-will-reach-the-red-planets-surface","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/how-nasas-mars-helicopter-will-reach-the-red-planets-surface\/","title":{"rendered":"#How NASA’s Mars helicopter will reach the red planet’s surface"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#How NASA’s Mars helicopter will reach the red planet’s surface<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n
\n
\n
\"How<\/img>
\n In this video clip, an engineer observes as a test of the Mars Helicopter Delivery System at Lockheed Martin Space in Denver on April 2019. Credit: LMS
\n <\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter will travel<\/a> with the Perseverance rover through 314 million miles (505 million kilometers) of interplanetary space to get to Mars. But for the team working on the first experimental flight test on another planet, engineering the final 5 inches (13 centimeters) of the journey has been among the most challenging of all. To safely navigate those 5 inches\u2014the distance Ingenuity will travel from where it’s stowed on the rover to the surface of Mars\u2014they came up with the ingenious Mars Helicopter Delivery System.<\/p>\n

\n <\/section>\n

“Ingenuity is unlike any other helicopter ever built because powered controlled flight at Mars is unlike anything ever attempted,” said MiMi Aung, project manager of the Mars Helicopter at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “And then we had to figure out how to hitch a ride and safely get deployed from the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover.”<\/p>\n

Ingenuity’s square fuselage (which houses computers, cameras, batteries and the like) is about the size of a softball (7.9 by 6.3 by 5.5 inches, or 20 by 16 by 14 centimeters). But if you look outside the box, you’ll find plenty of other important stuff\u2014including an antenna, solar panel, landing legs and two rotors measuring 4 feet (1.2 meters) across\u2014that makes stowing and deploying the helicopter a challenge. The entire package tips the scales at about 4 pounds (2 kilograms).
\n“On a Mars rover mission, the addition of even one new washer is usually worthy of debate,” said Chris Salvo, the helicopter interface lead of the Mars 2020 mission at JPL. “The Ingenuity Mars Helicopter is a large, fragile, unique assemblage of hardware that is dissimilar to anything NASA has ever accommodated on a planetary mission.”
\nMission engineers considered every available parking space on the rover chassis for their unusual addition, including the robotic arm. They eventually landed on Perseverance’s belly, which on a relatively flat stretch of Red Planet surface should offer about 26 inches (67 centimeters) of ground clearance. While that may seem like a lot of room (an Earthly SUV provides about a third of that), the delivery system reduces that distance by about 2 inches (6 centimeters). Ingenuity is about 19 inches (49 centimeters) tall. This is where the 5-inch journey comes in.
\n“That is not a lot of room to play with,” said Salvo, “but we found if you attach the helicopter horizontally, there is enough to get the job done.”<\/p>\n

<\/meta><\/meta><\/meta><\/meta><\/meta>
\n