NASA Ingenuity Summary and Reader Response Final Draft
On February 18, 2021, helicopter Ingenuity,
landed on Jezero Crater, Mars, along with rover, Perseverance (Gohd, 2021).
Ingenuity is the first aircraft to have flown on Mars. According to Mimi Aung,
Ingenuity’s project manager at NASA, Ingenuity had been fully tested on Earth
before the Mars mission.
Ingenuity’s main responsibility was not
research, but to test and prove that flight is possible on Mars. It is a small
helicopter equipped with carbon-fiber rotors that measure 1.2 meters across.
Its blades can spin up to 2500 revolutions per minute. Ingenuity faced several
challenges during its mission, such as attempting flight in Mars' thin
atmosphere and dealing with wind and dust storms as well as getting enough
energy for survival.
Ingenuity succeeded the first three flights,
flying to higher altitudes and for longer durations subsequently. However, on
its fourth flight attempt, Ingenuity failed to shift to "flight mode"
due to software issues, which was fixed with a software rewrite. However, even
after the fix, there was still a chance of a repeat of the incident.
As the flight mission was going better than
expected, Ingenuity had been tasked with finding new flight locations and
taking picture, all without the support of Perseverance nearby.
THESIS
Ingenuity is the first spacecraft to have flown
on Mars. Even though Ingenuity’s battery life is not the most suitable for the
mission, it is still ready for mission as it has been equipped with 4
carbon-fibre blades, solar panels to recharge its battery as well as 4
carbon-fibre legs to balance itself on the planet (NASA, n.d.).
SUPPORT 1
To ensure that Ingenuity can take flight on
Mars’ thin atmosphere, Ingenuity’s carbon-fibre blades are arranged in 2
rotors, which will spin at 2400 rotations per minute in opposite directions
(Schroeder, n.d.). The blades will spin at a speed that is 10 times faster than
what is needed on Earth (Clarke, 2018). According to Clarke, it is necessary to
spin the blades at such high speed to ensure successful take off on Mars, which
has atmosphere that is 1% as dense as the atmosphere on Earth. The carbon-fibre
blades have contributed greatly to the success of the mission as Ingenuity has
flown for the 31st time on September 6, 2022, even though it
was originally designed for only 5 flights (Wall, 2022).
SUPPORT 2
Ingenuity is fitted with a solar panel mounted
above the rotor blades that charges Lithium-ion batteries (Gohd, 2021). Gohd
stated that after Ingenuity left rover, Perseverance, it must rely on its own
solar panels to perform its tasks. According to Gohd, Ingenuity requires a high
amount of energy to complete daily tasks such as charging its battery,
communicating with the International Space Station as well as keep itself warm
to protect its electrical components from spoiling. Furthermore, Gohd also
claimed that Ingenuity has to ensure that it has sufficient energy to fly for
90 seconds per Martian day (sol). In the same article, we learnt that despite
the limited amount of power it has, Ingenuity managed to surpass everyone’s
expectations and flew for 117 seconds during its fourth flight. Ingenuity has
also managed to keep itself warm during the cold nights, proving that the
energy it received through the solar panels are sufficient to keep itself ‘alive’.
SUPPORT 3
Despite being a helicopter, Ingenuity has very
different landing gears as compared to helicopters on Earth. Instead of having
a skid landing gear like most helicopters we see on Earth, Ingenuity comes with
4 landing legs. Even on Earth, helicopters with skid landing gears refrain from
taking off and landing downwind as it interferes with the amount of energy the
helicopter needs to fly, which can prevent the helicopter from landing safely.
Mars is famous for having strong dust storms which can be seen from telescopes
on Earth (Mersmann, 2017). Since Ingenuity does not take off and land with
human control, it has a 4-legged landing gear which will help to stabilise it
for landing to prevent it from falling over due to wind.
COUNTER
However, Ingenuity’s battery capacity proved to
be a problem for the mission. Since Ingenuity performed better than expected,
its mission has been updated from 5 flight tests to scouting for new routes and
assist Perseverance in its research mission (Wall, September 2022). As a
result, Ingenuity had to continue working during winter, which it was not
prepared for due to the longer nights and shorter days (Strickland, 2022).
During the colder nights, most of Ingenuity’s battery are used to keep itself
warm to protect the electrical components. As a result, Ingenuity’s battery
dropped below the limit and it was powered down (Agle, 2022). This resulted in
Ingenuity’s clock being out of synchronization with Perseverance, which does
not allow Ingenuity to communicate with Perseverance (Tzanetos, 2022). According
to Tzanetos, Ingenuity has been shutting down every night to ensure that it
will wake up at the correct time and transfer critical logs over to the team.
CONCLUSION
Even though Ingenuity’s battery capacity is not
the best suited for a winter mission, Ingenuity still succeeded as it is only a
test flight. It achieved its primary mission, which is to prove the possibility
of flight on Mars.
REFERENCES
NASA's ingenuity
Mars Helicopter. American Scientist. (2020, October 19).
https://www.americanscientist.org/article/nasas-ingenuity-mars-helicopter
Clark, S. (2018,
May 14). Helicopter to accompany NASA's Next Mars rover to Red Planet. Spaceflight
Now.
https://spaceflightnow.com/2018/05/14/helicopter-to-accompany-nasas-next-mars-rover-to-red-planet/
Wall, M. (2022,
September 9). Ingenuity helicopter on Mars heads toward Ancient River Delta
on 31st flight. Space.com.
https://www.space.com/mars-helicopter-ingenuity-31st-flight-river-delta
Gohd, C. (2021, May
22). Mars helicopter ingenuity: First aircraft to fly on Red Planet.
Space.com.
https://www.space.com/ingenuity-mars-helicopter-perseverance-rover
Hille, K. (2015,
September 18). The fact and fiction of Martian dust storms. NASA.
https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/the-fact-and-fiction-of-martian-dust-storms
Strickland, A.
(2022, June 6). Mars ingenuity helicopter is on borrowed time as it endures
winter. CNN.
https://edition.cnn.com/2022/06/06/world/ingenuity-helicopter-mars-winter-scn/index.html
NASA. (n.d.). NASA's
ingenuity in contact with Perseverance Rover after communications dropout.
NASA.
Tzanetos, T. (2022,
May 27). Ingenuity Adapts for Mars Winter Operations. NASA Science Mars.
https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter/status/382/ingenuity-adapts-for-mars-winter-operations/
Comments
Post a Comment