Posted on 04/03/2021 3:00:49 PM PDT by MtnClimber
Explanation: The Mars Ingenuity Helicopter, all four landing legs down, was captured here on sol 39 (March 30) slung beneath the belly of the Perseverance rover. The near ground level view is a mosaic of images from the WATSON camera on the rover's SHERLOC robotic arm. Near the center of the frame the experimental helicopter is suspended just a few centimeters above the martian surface. Tracks from Perseverance extend beyond the rover's wheels with the rim of Jezero crater visible about 2 kilometers in the distance. Ingenuity has a weight of 1.8 kilograms or 4 pounds on Earth. That corresponds to a weight of 0.68 kilograms or 1.5 pounds on Mars. With rotor blades spanning 1.2 meters it will attempt to make the first powered flight of an aircraft on another planet in the thin martian atmosphere, 1 percent as dense as Earth's, no earlier than April 11.
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I can’t wait to see this puppy fly!
This is amazing stuff. Still blows my mind anything can fly in an atmosphere 1% of Earth’s.
Human supremacists proceed with their invasion of an unarmed planet.
They flew it in a semi vacuum {1%}chamber and it worked. Don’t know how they compensated for 1/3 G. Or if they even tried.
Look at all those rocks.
Those are some good rocks.
They rock!
Oops. Wikipedia says
For flight testing, a large vacuum chamber was used to simulate the very low atmospheric pressure of Mars – filled with carbon dioxide to approximately 0.60% (about 1⁄160) of standard atmospheric pressure at sea level on Earth – which is roughly equivalent to a helicopter flying at 34,000 m (112,000 ft) altitude in the atmosphere of Earth. In order to simulate the much reduced gravity field of Mars (38% of Earth’s), 62% of Earth’s gravity was offset by a line pulling upwards during flight tests.[8]
They used fishing line attached to the copter and connected to a compensating winch.
Cool Picture. Hope they don’t back over the drone...
That was a great video. Many challenges in development, testing and operation that most people don’t know about.
Great pics.
Thanks for posting them.
Yes they did compensate for 1/3 g. Nasa still has some left over Flubber and attached some to each leg. Worked great.
What a fun project to work on, huh?
Agree. Great video! Thx
Some of them look like they’d fit nicely in a sling shot pouch.
#MarsHelicopter touchdown confirmed! Its 293 million mile (471 million km) journey aboard @NASAPersevere
ended with the final drop of 4 inches (10 cm) from the rover’s belly to the surface of Mars today. Next milestone? Survive the night. http://go.nasa.gov/ingenuity
https://twitter.com/NASAJPL/status/1378513754241961985
“Next milestone? Survive the night.”
Happy Easter!
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