What Has NASA’s Martian Helicopter Been Doing?
Around three years ago NASA launched the Ingenuity Helicopter which eventually touched down on Mars early the next year. Since 2021, NASA has been consistently flying the helicopter trying new and more ambitious routes each time. Just yesterday on the 5th, Ingenuity was scheduled for its 50th flight, expected to travel more than 1000 feet or around 306 meters in total.
The whole purpose of this helicopter was to determine if powered, controlled flight at the Red Planet was possible. If this were the case, it would open up a lot of future opportunities as NASA sets its sights on sending humans to the planet. In the over 2 years Ingenuity has been on the surface, not only has it shown that powered flight is possible, but it also has given the agency some new ideas.
What makes its tests so impressive is the fact that flight at Mars is extremely challenging because the Red Planet has significantly lower gravity and a very thin atmosphere. Here I will go more in-depth into the historic 50th flight, what exactly Ingenuity has been up to, why its results are so important, and more.
Ingenuity’s Progress
Since Ingenuity’s first ever powered flight, NASA has been keeping track of practically every metric possible and providing that information to the public. This flight log reveals years of work and a few important patterns can be seen. Starting Sol 58 and going all the way to Sol 752, there have been a total of 49 confirmed flights. To get a better idea of how far this helicopter has actually flown, in total it traveled more than 11,000 meters or close to 37,000 feet. Its highest ever altitude was 16 meters off the ground or around 52 feet and the longest flight was just under 1 hour and a half long. These numbers are very impressive and have given NASA a huge boost in confidence regarding powered flight on the red planet.
In addition to providing valuable insights on the operation of the helicopter itself, Ingenuity has also been working closely with the Perseverance Rover. The Perseverance rover spent the first two Earth years of its mission on Mars driving and sampling within the Jezero crater. With this important work out of the way, the rover’s science team eagerly turned its attention to the prospect of new and exciting discoveries in the unexplored area on the Delta Top. To reach these areas as quickly as possible, the scientists planned an aggressive driving campaign up the river delta. The first stop in this race up the delta would be the Tenby region – home to some of the most geologically interesting outcrops of the delta.
This fresh terrain represented a golden opportunity for Ingenuity to prove its worth to the rover’s science mission. Providing the rover team with recon images just a few days before the rover reaches a site gives scientists significantly more time to determine their exploration priorities, and gives rover planners advanced notice of any unexpected terrain. With the fading of Martian winter, Ingenuity now had enough power to fly hundreds of meters ahead of the rover with each flight and deliver on the promise of being a real science scout.
This being said, Ingenuity is by no means perfect and there were some complications during this process. For one, unlike the relatively flat and unobstructed crater floor, the canyon-like river delta presented some serious communication challenges between the rover and the helicopter, meaning that the helicopter could never hope to get more than a few hundred meters ahead of the rover. This effectively nullified any speed advantage Ingenuity had over the rover. Second, unlike the Jezero crater floor, the rover would not be loitering in any spot for more than a few sols, meaning that if the helicopter ever fell behind, there would be precious little time to catch up before falling out of communications range. Third, the helicopter is required to maintain a wide keepout zone around the rover during flight. Normally this isn’t a problem, but in the narrow channels of the river delta, it effectively means that Ingenuity doesn’t have enough space to pass the rover if it ever falls behind. The end result of these constraints was to put the helicopter in the precarious mode of making short but frequent flights timed to stay just ahead of the rover as it drove.
Considering Ingenuity’s original purpose and design, it still was doing an impressive job scouting for the rover. As NASA gets more comfortable and pushes the helicopter to its limits, we can expect to see more unique applications such as this.
Future of Mars
With Ingenuity’s successful results thus far, NASA has begun working on even more ambitious projects that have to do with flying on Mars. The first is named the Mars Science Helicopter. This massive helicopter features 6 rotors and is said to be around the same size as the rover, which is close to a car. The Mars Science Helicopter (MSH) task is the next evolutionary step for Martian rotorcraft at JPL. The key focus is to develop the technology needed to deploy science payloads (0.5kg – 2kg) on rotorcraft platforms at the surface of Mars. MSH will inherit many of the technologies created by the Mars Helicopter Technology Demonstrator (MHTD) baselined for Mars 2020, and extend capabilities in order to enable a new class of mesoscale planetary access across Mars.
Designing and proving how science payloads can be deployed, recovered, integrated, and operated on a dynamically and computationally representative rotorcraft will be critical in expanding a new frontier for Martian scientific exploration. In terms of its actual application, NASA envisions fleets of these large helicopters flying around and carrying payloads to areas of Mars they haven’t been able to access before.
Another project that we could see not long from now is the Sample Recovery Helicopter. The Sample Recovery Helicopters are modeled after the successful Ingenuity Mars Helicopter. These specialized rotorcraft would be a secondary method of sample retrieval for the NASA/ESA Mars Sample Return Campaign. Currently, the Perseverance rover, which has already been collecting a diverse set of scientifically curated samples for potential safe return to Earth, is planned as the primary method of delivering samples to the Sample Retrieval Lander. The Sample Recovery Helicopters would expand on Ingenuity’s design, adding wheels and gripping capabilities to pick up cached sample tubes left on the surface by Perseverance and transport them to the Sample Retrieval Lander.
It’s important to point out that this specific helicopter is not planned to be the primary method of retrieving samples on Mars. Current plans call for the Perseverance rover to carry sample tubes directly to the Sample Retrieval Lander. However, should the rover become unable to deliver its onboard samples, the helicopters would be prepared to collect alternate sample tubes previously left on the surface by Perseverance. In this case, the helicopters would take off and land at predetermined sites, or helipads, that have been found suitable and safe, and would use in-flight, map-based navigation to reach the known locations of sample tubes left on the surface.
Each helicopter would follow a four-day procedure to recover sample tubes. Day 1: fly to an area near the sample tube. Day 2: drive close to the tube and pick it up. Day 3: fly back to an area near the Sample Retrieval Lander. Day 4: drive close to the lander and drop the tube in the workspace of the lander’s Sample Transfer Arm.
These future helicopter designs are being created based on new information and tests performed with Ingenuity. Focusing back on Ingenuity’s recent work with Perseverance, despite the problems, NASA was mostly successful. The race began on Sol 697 during (Flight 42), with the helicopter flying past Rocky Top and landing near Jenkins Gap. Out of the gate, it became apparent just how hard this process was going to be. Even the modest distance covered by Flight 42 had taken NASA out of communications range. Attempts to bring back useful science images from the flight resulted in nothing but a few garbled packets (just enough to show them the helicopter was still alive). It took another four sols before the rover was close enough to restore communications and get any useful data back to the rover. By that time, the rover was practically on top of the helicopter and another urgent flight was needed. Unfortunately, the flight data also showed a curious and potentially dangerous issue with the landing hazard mitigation system (used successfully since Flight 39). The team worked around the clock to understand the issue, giving the all-clear with just enough time to fly before being overtaken on Sol 708.
This game of cat and mouse repeated itself several more times over the next few flights, with the helicopter operations team eventually setting a new record for flight frequency. While the helicopter team typically hopes to fly as often as once a week, they ultimately completed four flights (42-46) in the space of just nine days. Taken together, these incredible efforts allowed the helicopter to stay ahead of the rover all the way up the delta, arriving at the destination while holding a respectable two-sol lead on Perseverance. A number of issues (communications failures, anomalies with the rover, and a recurrence of a known helicopter camera issue) have since conspired to prevent NASA from getting advanced reconnaissance of Tenby, but they’re looking forward to scouting other nearby science targets while the rover is occupied over the next few sols. NASA was quoted saying, “This was just the opening chapter of what has the potential to be an epic kilometers-long race on the red planet.”
Conclusion
In the over two years Ingenuity has been on the Martian surface, it has performed a total of 50 flights each trying more ambitious routes. This information and data have given NASA the confidence to start developing a few new Martian helicopter designs. We will have to wait and see how it progresses and the impact it has on the space industry.
