PHOENIX — Sunday marks a huge day in the history of space exploration and in the history of human flight, which began with the Wright Brothers in 1903.
NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter is scheduled to make its first flight on Mars, making it the first powered flight on another planet.
The helicopter traveled to Mars attached to the bottom of the Perseverance rover, which landed on the red planet in February.
Dave Lavery, NASA’S program director for Solar System Exploration, says the goal is to learn more about Mars, its atmospheric conditions, and whether or not life exists, ever existed, or ever could exist there. This has been the goal of many missions to Mars, dating back 25 years to the landing of Sojourner in 1997.
“What Ingenuity is going to do is continue that by branching into that third dimension, by being able to get airborn and fly over very very rugged, hazardous terrain, or to fly to locations that might be too dangerous or difficult to reach,” Lavery said.
Flying on Mars is not nearly as simple as it may seem. Flying on Earth is hard enough, and, according to Lavery, Mars has an atmosphere that is much less dense than that of Earth. Thin atmosphere makes it difficult for a flying craft to generate enough power to keep itself off of the ground.
“It would be equivalent to an aircraft on Earth trying to fly at 100,000 feet,” Lavery said, adding that helicopters can reach a maximum altitude of about 40,000 feet under perfect conditions.
Because of that difficulty, Lavery says the first test flights will be quick and mostly experimental. The first will only last about 30 seconds.
“A simple vertical rise, then hover above the ground at about ten feet for 30 seconds, then come back down,” Lavery said.
Mars is more than 33 million miles away from Earth, and Lavery says communication signals can take as long as 22 seconds to get to Ingenuity, so the little helicopter will fly a pre-programmed route. Researchers here on Earth will then be able to retrieve Ingenuity’s data, which will be relayed through Perseverance.
“Just that quick first flight will tell us an awful lot about well the system can work in the Mars atmosphere, how stable it can be,” Lavery said.
If you’re curious, you can follow along with scientists, viewing the pictures and data as they do. To do that, visit www.Mars.NASA.gov.
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