On Monday, April 19, 2021, a historic event took place – the first controlled flight of an Ingenuity helicopter took place on Mars.
Ingenuity first took to the air on April 19, 2021 at 10:43 Moscow time. As planned, Ingenuity hovered at 3 meters for 30 seconds. The flight lasted 39.1 seconds in total. In the near future, Ingenuity is to make a series of longer flights over Jezero Crater.
The Ingenuity team hopes to complete four more flights in two weeks. The second flight is roughly planned for tomorrow – Thursday, April 22. The flights will gradually become more and more ambitious.
Ingenuity Project Manager MiMi Aung said:
This is a trailblazer. We really want to know what the limits are, so we will very deliberately expand them. “
Chief Engineer Bob Balaram from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California told reporters that Ingenuity’s followers could be more impressive – from 25 to 30 kg, while the original Ingenuity is a very small device weighing 1.8 kg and a height of 48 cm.
The lab is now doing early design work – conceptual design and figuring out what will be required to deploy and operate them. Balaram also noted that the followers of Ingenuity will receive equipment for scientific research. If Ingenuity received only a black and white navigation camera and a 13MP color camera, and does not carry scientific equipment at all, then its larger successor will probably be able to lift about 4.5 kg of research equipment.
However, one should not hope for anything beyond this. As Balaram explained, in this case, the current Ingenuity form factor becomes simply inconvenient. However, a device of the 25 to 30 kg class is quite real.
Recall that the helicopter was delivered to Mars attached to the bottom of the Perseverance rover, which landed in the Jezero crater on February 18, 2021. The main task of Ingenuity is precisely to demonstrate technology and conduct the first flights on Mars.
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