Abstract
The Ingenuity Helicopter will be deployed from the Perseverance Rover for a 30-sol experimental campaign shortly after the rover lands and is commissioned. We describe the helicopter and the associated Technology Demonstration experiment it will conduct, as well as its role in informing future helicopter missions to Mars. This helicopter will demonstrate, for the first time, autonomous controlled flight of an aircraft in the Mars environment, thus opening up an aerial dimension to Mars exploration. The \(1.8~\text{kg}\), \(1.2~\text{m}\) diameter helicopter, with twin rotors in a counter-rotating co-axial configuration, will help validate aerodynamics, control, navigation and operations concepts for flight in the thin Martian atmosphere. The rover supports a radio link between the helicopter and mission operators on Earth, and information returned from a planned set of five flights, each lasting up to 90 seconds, will inform the development of new Mars helicopter designs for future missions. Such designs in the \(4~\text{kg}\text{--}30~\text{kg}\) range would have the capability to fly many kilometers daily and carry science payloads of \(1~\text{kg}\text{--}5~\text{kg}\). Small helicopters can be deployed as scouts for future rovers helping to select interesting science targets, determine optimal rover driving routes, and providing contextual high-vantage imagery. Larger craft can be operated in standalone fashion with a tailored complement of science instruments with direct-to-orbiter communication enabling wide-area operations. Other roles including working cooperatively with a central lander to provide area-wide sampling and science investigations. For future human exploration at Mars, helicopter can be employed to provide reconnaissance.
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Abbreviations
- COTS:
-
Commerical Off-the-shelf
- FPGA:
-
Field-Programmable Gate Array
- IMU:
-
Inertial Measurement Unit
- LES:
-
Large Eddy Simulation
- MEMS:
-
Microelectromechanical System
- MHDS:
-
Mars Helicopter Delivery System
- ROI:
-
Region-of-Interest
- C:
-
degree Celsius
- kg:
-
kilogram
- km:
-
kilometer
- m:
-
meter
- rpm:
-
revolutions per minute
- s, sec:
-
second
- sol:
-
Martian day
- Wh:
-
Watt hour
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Acknowledgements
The research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (80NM0018D0004). Copyright: © 2020. California Institute of Technology. Government sponsorship acknowledged. In summarizing their contributions, the authors would like to acknowledge helicopter team members at AeroVironment Inc., NASA Ames Research Center, NASA Langley Research Center, Qualcomm, and SolAero Technologies Inc.
Funding
The research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (80NM0018D0004).
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The Mars 2020 Mission
Edited by Kenneth A. Farley, Kenneth H. Williford and Kathryn M. Stack
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Balaram, J., Aung, M. & Golombek, M.P. The Ingenuity Helicopter on the Perseverance Rover. Space Sci Rev 217, 56 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11214-021-00815-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11214-021-00815-w