Extract from ABC News
NASA's Ingenuity helicopter will attempt to make its first flight from the surface of Mars today.
Key points:
- Ingenuity is all set to become the first powered craft to fly on another planet
- NASA is planning four more flights, should the first one be successful
- The first flight was originally scheduled for last week, but delayed due to a software glitch
If it succeeds, it will make history as the first powered craft to take off from another planet other than Earth.
"Each world only gets one first flight," said NASA's MiMi Aung, project lead of Ingenuity.
"The Wright Brothers achieved the first flight on Earth; Ingenuity is poised to be the first for Mars."
The chopper was set to take its maiden flight last week, but was delayed by a last-minute software glitch.
After further testing over the weekend, Ms Aung said NASA was optimistic the helicopter will take off later this afternoon.
"But this is a test, so we are prepared it might not happen," Ms Aung said in the project's latest update.
"We’re doing everything we can to make it a success, but we also know that we may have to scrub and try again."
If all goes according to plan, you can watch this historic moment unfold on NASA's social media platforms such as YouTube and Facebook from 8:15pm (AEST), as the team sweat it out waiting for the first data to come down.
"Any data — success or failure — will be useful to future projects," said NASA's Tim Canham, who leads the helicopter operations.
What will happen during the first flight?
Think of the first flight as a baby step.
Ingenuity will go up 3 metres above its launch pad, hover for about 30 seconds, and return to the ground.
"That will be a very basic test so we can get an idea of the dynamics of flying in the atmosphere," Mr Canham said.
The whole process will only take about 40 seconds.
"We want to make the very first flight is a safe one."
It sounds simple and the team has tested this manoeuvre over and over again in a special simulator on Earth that mimics conditions on Mars, but once the team sends the command to "fly", Ingenuity is on its own.
"Once we send the command in the morning to say 'fly' — we send then a whole heap of commands then hit 'go' — there's nothing we can do to change the outcome at that point."
When it receives the command to fly, Ingenuity uses data from sensors and its navigation camera to tell it where it's going and how fast it's travelling to stay on its pre-programmed trajectory.
Once the team sends the commands up to fly, they do not know what has happened until the first data starts flowing down three to four hours later.
"So it's going to fly when nobody is there to watch it except for the [Perseverance] rover," Mr Canham said.
Could anything go wrong?
"We did lots of testing here in a chamber on Earth, but it's not Mars," Mr Canham said.
While the coffee-table-sized drone was put through its paces on Earth, recent delays to the flight last week caused by software glitches show anything can go wrong on this "high risk, high reward" mission.
Until that point, Ingenuity had hit all its marks.
First, it survived the "seven minutes of terror" landing strapped to the bottom of the Perseverance rover.
Then after slowly unfurling from its hiding spot, it was dropped on the Martian surface last week to fend for itself and survive through its first freezing night.
After waking up, the helicopter sent back its first colour image, and Perseverance, which was sitting nearby, sent back the first images of a helicopter on Martian soil.
The helicopter passed the first tests of its rotor and blades, but the day before it was scheduled to fly, a glitch prevented the helicopter moving into the pre-fly mode.
Over the past week the team tweaked the software and put the helicopter put through its final tests again.
This time it passed — but that is no guarantee of a successful mission on the day.
If the software stops the helicopter going into flight mode again, the team will either try again a couple of days later or upload new software, which will take a bit longer to retest and reschedule.
What will we see?
The first data will include readings from sensors that tell the team whether or not the helicopter reached all of its pre-programmed milestones.
This is likely to include a single fuzzy black and white image of the ground taken by Ingenuity as it came back down to land.
Ingenuity also has a colour camera, but it will take several days for these images plus more black and white images to arrive back on Earth.
Meanwhile, Perseverance will also try to capture images and video from its perspective.
"Depending on how much data can be transferred during the downlink after the flight, there is [also] a good chance we will see images of the helicopter from the rover on the day the flight occurs," Mr Canham said.
If everything goes to plan, the first high-resolution images and video of the flight should start arriving on Tuesday morning (AEST).
Capturing video will be particularly tricky, says Elsa Jensen, who is leading the team operating the Mastcam-Z camera on the rover.
If the camera team is lucky, they will capture something on one of the six two-second snippets they initially download.
And, unlike taking a video on Earth, they can't move the camera on the rover's mast to track the action. because this could interfere with the communication link to the helicopter.
"This is really hard. We have practised it (they took images of the helicopter spinning over the weekend), but we'll know there'll be surprises," Ms Jensen said.
You can see all the new images as they flow in over the next days and weeks on NASA's website.
What happens once Ingenuity completes its first flight?
If the helicopter succeeds, it will complete up to four more flights.
"The exact spacing will depend on how quickly we feel we understand the previous flight before flying the next, but nominally it will be every three [Martian days] or so," Mr Canham said.
Each flight will be more ambitious.
During flights two and three, which are pre-programmed, it will rise up to 5m and fly for a distance of up to 15m before returning to its helipad.
"We don't want to go haring off into the distance where there might be something we haven't surveyed yet," Mr Canham said.
Flights four and five will depend on what happens during the first three flights.
"If one of the first three don't work, we can repeat it so the final two flights are still open," Mr Canham said.
But if everything goes well. the team will get much bolder, Ms Aung said.
"Once we get to the fourth flight we want to have fun," she said.
"It's not everyday you get to test a rotor craft and do an experiment on Mars."
Once it completes five flights — if it makes it that far — its job of simply proving it is possible to fly a helicopter on Mars is done.
Some of the black and white images may be used to help design navigation systems for future drones.
While the helicopter — which is not built to withstand the Martian extremes — goes to sleep, Perseverance will drive away and get ready to start the main mission: to find evidence of past life on Mars.
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