Reader Response Draft 1

Helicopter Ingenuity

From the article by Gohd (2021), ‘Mars helicopter Ingenuity: First aircraft to fly on Red planet’, helicopter Ingenuity took off successfully on April 19, 2021. Tucked in NASA’s Perseverance Rover’s belly, it was NASA’s first aircraft to be launched to the Red Planet on February 18, 2021, as part of NASA’s Mars 2020 mission. Some of helicopter Ingenuity's features are solar panels, batteries, rotor blades, and cameras. Based on the article, the helicopter's solar panel charges Lithium-ion batteries that provide enough energy for one 90-second flight per Martian day. Gohd (2021) also mentioned Ingenuity to have two cameras on board, one with 0.3-megapixel black-and-white camera that points down to the ground, used for navigation. The other camera is a 12-megapixel high-resolution that looks out to the horizon. As mentioned in the article, the helicopter has rotor blades of just under 1.2 meters across, powered by a small solar panel mounted above its rotor blades.

Despite its small range of functions, helicopter Ingenuity proves that flight of drone on another planet is possible, conjunctionally taking images of the planet or space. 

Helicopter Ingenuity was able to prove that powered flight is possible on the Mars. Based on Potter (2021), Mars’ atmosphere is very thin compared to Earth where Mars has an atmospheric volume of less than 1% that of Earth’s. Moreover, the temperature on Mars could decrease to -100 degree Celsius at night at the landing site. There were other challenges in flying a helicopter on Mars which included wind and dust storms and making sure that the craft has enough power from its solar array as mentioned by Gohd (2021). Amos (2021) also mentioned that due to the sheer distance between Earth and Mars, manually controlling the device was out of question. Therefore, it is a big accomplishment that helicopter Ingenuity was successfully able to lift off for up to three meters above the surface for about 40 seconds on its first try.

Helicopter Ingenuity is equipped with cameras and sensors that allow it to navigate around Mars. Based on Amos (2021) Ingenuity has two cameras onboard. The black-and-white camera points to the ground to navigate around the planet while the high-resolution coloured camera looks out into the open horizon in order to display the view back to the engineers and scientists on Earth. Photographs taken for navigation were also sent back to Earth. These images revealed the helicopter’s shadow on the floor of the crater as it came to land back down as quoted by Amos (2021). Thus, Ingenuity is able to capture the necessary images required and send them back to Earth for NASA engineers and scientists to view upon it.

 

Nonetheless, helicopter Ingenuity is not a fully-fledged transportation device. It has very little additional technology as mentioned by Gohd (2021). Potter (2020) also mentioned that Ingenuity was only intended as a technology demonstration. However, NASA(n.d) mentioned that it hopes to increase Ingenuity’s usage to use it as a transportation device where it could assist any astronauts working on that planet. Therefore, the helicopter is not exactly suitable for different types of tests that would help the astronauts and scientists in the future.

 

Regardless of being a relatively small and minute experiment, Ingenuity was able to break the boundary of surface travel on Mars. Thus, helicopter Ingenuity would be the first step into easier space and planet explorations where images of these expeditions could be returned back using the quality cameras. Together with that, NASA hopes to modify the device such that it could aid astronauts as a transport device.

 

References

Gohd, C. (2021, May 22). Mars helicopter ingenuity: First aircraft to fly on Red Planet. Space.com. Retrieved October 6, 2021, from https://www.space.com/ingenuity-mars-helicopter-perseverance-rover.

Potter, N. (2021, July), "A Mars helicopter preps for launch: The first drone to fly on another planet will hitch a ride on NASA's Perseverance rover - [News]," in IEEE Spectrum, 57( 7) https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9438289

Amos, J. (2021, April 19). NASA successfully flies small helicopter on Mars. BBC News. Retrieved October 6, 2021, from https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-56799755.

NASA. (n.d.). Mars helicopter. NASA. Retrieved October 7, 2021, from https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter/#Overview.