Washington:
The helicopter that NASA has placed on Mars could make its very first flight more than the Red Planet inside two days soon after a prosperous initial test of its rotors, the US space agency mentioned Friday.
The existing strategy for the very first-ever try at powered, controlled flight on a different planet is for the 4-pound (1.8 kilogram) helicopter, dubbed the Ingenuity, to take off from Mars’ Jezero Crater on Sunday at 10:54 pm US eastern time (0254 GMT Monday) and hover 10 feet (3 meters) above the surface for a half-minute, NASA mentioned.
“The helicopter is good, it’s looking healthy,” mentioned Tim Canham, Ingenuity operations lead, in a press conference.
“Last night, we did our 50 RPM spin, where we spun the blades very slowly and carefully,” he mentioned.
The strategy for Sunday is to have it rise, flying only vertically, hover and rotate for 30 seconds to take a image of the Perseverance rover, which touched down on Mars on February 18 with the helicopter attached to its underside.
Then the Ingenuity will be lowered back down onto the surface.
The flight will be autonomous, pre-programmed into the aircraft since of the 15 minutes it requires for signals to travel from Earth to Mars, and also due to the demanding atmosphere of the distant planet.
“Mars is hard not only when you land, but when you try to take off from it and fly around, too,”mentioned MiMi Aung, Ingenuity project manager.
She explained that the planet has considerably significantly less gravity than Earth, but significantly less than one % the stress of Earth’s atmosphere at the surface.
The tends to make it important for the Ingenuity to be capable to spin its rotor blades considerably more rapidly than a helicopter on Earth in order to fly.
“Put those things together, and you have a vehicle that demands every input be right,” mentioned Aung.
NASA captured the test of the rotors in a brief video shot from the rover just a handful of meters away, displaying what appears like a modest drone.
Aung mentioned a second test would be carried out today, with the rotors operating at higher speed.
“The only uncertainty remains the actual environment of Mars,” she mentioned, mentioning attainable winds.
NASA calls the unprecedented helicopter operation extremely risky, but says it could reap invaluable information about the situations on Mars.
NASA plans up to 5 flights, every single successively more challenging, in a period of a month.
()