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SPACE TECHNOLOGY

two landing legs will snap into position. On each of those four
sols, the wide-angle topographic sensor for operations and
engineering (WATSON) imager will take confirmation shots of
Ingenuity as it incrementally unfolds into its flight configuration. In
its final position, the helicopter will hang suspended at about 13
centimetres over the Martian surface. At that point, only a single
bolt and a couple of dozen tiny electrical contacts will connect the
helicopter to Perseverance. On the fifth sol of deployment, the
team will use the final opportunity to utilise Perseverance as a
power source and charge Ingenuity’s six battery cells.
“Once we cut the cord with Perseverance and drop those final
five inches to the surface, we want to have our big friend drive
away as quickly as possible so we can get the Sun’s rays on our
solar panel and begin recharging our batteries”, said Balaram
On the sixth and final scheduled sol of this deployment phase,
the team will need to confirm three things: that Ingenuity’s four
legs are firmly on the surface of Jezero Crater, that the rover did, and-white imagery from the helicopter’s own navigation camera,
indeed, drive about five metres away, and that both helicopter and could be downlinked to JPL. During the third sol of this phase,
rover are communicating via their onboard radios. This milestone the two images taken by the helicopter’s high resolution colour
also initiates the 30-sol clock during which time all pre-flight camera, should arrive. The Mars helicopter team will use all
checks and flight tests must take place. information available to determine when and how to move forward
“Ingenuity is an experimental engineering flight test – we want with its next test.
to see if we can fly on Mars,” said MiMi Aung, project manager “Mars is hard,” said Aung. “Our plan is to work with whatever
for Ingenuity Mars helicopter at JPL. “There are no science the red planet throws at us the very same way we handled every
instruments on board and no goals to obtain scientific information. challenge we’ve faced over the past six years – together, with
We are confident that all the engineering data we want to obtain tenacity and a lot of hard work, and a little Ingenuity.”
both on the surface of Mars and aloft can be done within this 30-
sol window.” A piece of history
As with deployment, the helicopter and rover teams will While Ingenuity will attempt the first powered, controlled flight
approach the upcoming flight test methodically. If the team misses on another planet, the first powered, controlled flight on Earth
or has questions about an important pre-flight milestone, they took place on 17 December 1903, on the windswept dunes of
may take one or more sols to better understand the issue. If the Kill Devil Hill near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Orville and Wilbur
helicopter survives the first night of the sequence period on the Wright covered 120 feet in 12 seconds during the first flight. The
surface of Mars, however, the team will spend the next several Wright brothers made four flights that day, each longer than the
sols doing everything possible to ensure a successful flight, previous one.
including wiggling the rotor blades and verifying the performance A small amount of the material that covered one of the wings
of the inertial measurement unit, as well as testing the entire rotor of the Wright brothers’ aircraft, known as the Flyer, during the first
system during a spin-up to 2,537 rpm (while Ingenuity’s landing flight is now aboard Ingenuity. An insulative tape was used to wrap
gear remains firmly on the surface). the small swatch of fabric around a cable located underneath
the helicopter’s solar panel. The Wrights used the same type of
The first flight test on Mars material – an unbleached muslin called ‘Pride of the West’ – to
Once the team is ready to attempt the first flight, Perseverance cover their glider and aircraft wings beginning in 1901. The Apollo
will receive and relay to Ingenuity the final flight instructions from 11 crew flew a different piece of the material, along with a small
JPL mission controllers. Several factors will determine the precise splinter of wood from the Wright Flyer, to the Moon and back
time for the flight, including modelling of local wind patterns, during their iconic mission in July 1969.
plus measurements taken by the Mars Environmental Dynamics
Analyser (MEDA) aboard Perseverance. Ingenuity will run its rotors More about Perseverance
to 2 537 rpm and, if all final self-checks look good, lift off. After A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is
climbing at a rate of about one metre per second), the helicopter astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial
will hover at ten feet (three meters) above the surface for up to 30 life. The rover will characterise the planet’s geology and past
seconds. Then, the Mars helicopter will descend and touch back climate, pave the way for human exploration of the red planet, and
down on the Martian surface. be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith
Several hours after the first flight has occurred, Perseverance (broken rock and dust).
will downlink Ingenuity’s first set of engineering data and, possibly, Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA
images and video from the rover’s navigation cameras and (European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to
mastcam-Z. From the data downlinked that first evening after the collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to
flight, the Mars helicopter team expects to be able to determine if Earth for in-depth analysis.
its first attempt to fly at Mars was a success. JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena,
On the following sol, all the remaining engineering data California, built and managed operations of the Perseverance
collected during the flight, as well as some low resolution, black- rover. n

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