from the don't-forgot-to-pay-the-$5-FAA-registration-fee dept.
As Previously Covered the NASA's Mars 2020 Rover mission will include a helicopter drone designed to work in the thin Martian atmosphere. Testing of the copter has now entered its final phase.
While the Mars Copter is just a technology demonstrator and will carry no science instruments, it will have an onboard high resolution camera and will be controlled from Earth with communications relayed through the Rover at a rate of 250kb/s at distances up to 1000 meters.
"We expect to complete our final tests and refinements and deliver the helicopter to the High Bay 1 clean room for integration with the rover sometime this summer," said Aung, "but we will never really be done with testing the helicopter until we fly at Mars."
The Mars Helicopter will launch with the Mars 2020 rover on a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket in July 2020 from Space Launch Complex 41 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, Florida. When it lands in Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021, the rover will also be the first spacecraft in the history of planetary exploration with the ability to accurately retarget its point of touchdown during the landing sequence.
The 4 lb (1.8 kg) Linux based drone has a body about the size of a softball. It will be run on lithium-ion batteries charged via solar panels and is constructed of lightweight materials - carbon fiber, aircraft aluminum, silicon, copper, foil, and aerogel.
The helicopter's twin blades will whirl at about 10 times the rate of a helicopter's blades on Earth — at 3,000 rpm — to stay aloft in Mars' thin atmosphere.
The demonstrator is expected to make as many as five flights before being retired.
Related Stories
NASA's next big Mars rover will include a helicopter designed to work in Mars's thin atmosphere:
When NASA launches its next rover to Mars, the vehicle will have a small helicopter along for the ride. NASA announced today that it will be sending a small autonomous flying chopper — aptly named the Mars Helicopter — with the upcoming Mars 2020 rover. The helicopter will attempt to fly through the Martian air to see if vehicles can even levitate on Mars, where the atmosphere is 100 times thinner than that of Earth.
The design for the Mars Helicopter has been in the works for the last four years at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, but the space agency had yet to decide if it was actually going to send the vehicle to Mars. NASA needed to determine if this technology was actually feasible and if the agency had enough money in its budget to include the copter, according to Spaceflight Now. Now it seems that the agency has decided that this copter idea could actually work.
One much better place in the solar system for a flying vehicle is Titan, which has lower surface gravity and a denser atmosphere than Earth.
Related: Titan Ripe for Drone Invasion
NASA New Frontiers Finalists: Comet 67P Sample Return and a Titan Drone
Mars-bound spaceship experiencing technical issues: NASA:
Mars 2020, the spaceship carrying NASA's new rover Perseverance to the Red Planet, is experiencing technical difficulties and is running on essential systems only, the agency said Thursday.
"Data indicate the spacecraft had entered a state known as safe mode, likely because a part of the spacecraft was a little colder than expected while Mars 2020 was in Earth's shadow," NASA said.
The spaceship has left Earth's shadow and the temperatures are now normal.
[...] Matt Wallace, the mission's deputy project manager, said that the fact that the spaceship had entered safe mode was not overly concerning.
"That's perfectly fine, the spacecraft is happy there," he said. "The team is working through that telemetry, they're going to look through the rest of the spacecraft health. "So far, everything I've seen looks good, so we'll know more in a little bit."
Related:
Perseverance, Ingenuity begin seven month journey to Mars
Atlas 5 launches Mars 2020 mission
Previously:
Mars 2020 Rover to Include a Mars Helicopter
Mars Helicopter Enters Final Testing
Mars Mission Readies Tiny Chopper for Red Planet Flight
NASA Reveals the New Wavy Martian Wheels it Thinks Can Crush the Red Planet
Three Missions to Mars Happening this Month
(Score: 3, Informative) by ilPapa on Friday June 07 2019, @07:17PM (12 children)
The president of the United States just said that "the moon is part of Mars". Yes, seriously.
https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1137051097955102720 [twitter.com]
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Snow on Friday June 07 2019, @07:23PM (6 children)
To be fair, I believe he was trying to say that going to the moon is a stepping stone to develop the tech towards a trip to mars.
(Score: 2, Informative) by ilPapa on Friday June 07 2019, @08:07PM
To be even more fair, he specifically says we should NOT be going to the moon. He even put it in caps for emphasis.
His ability to gaslight by telling people he didn't say what he just said is starting to wane. It's just not working any more.
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by ikanreed on Friday June 07 2019, @08:12PM (4 children)
Yeah, but who wants to be fair to him?
The "giving him all the credit he's due" version is still "ignore the moon, go to mars, and because of that go to the moon" It's fractal stupidity, if you zoom out to the bigger context to assume good faith you still end in ramblings of a brain that clearly doesn't work.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday June 08 2019, @06:04PM (3 children)
I happen to think that is a dead end. For example, Robert Zubrin discusses the problems with the approach of using the Moon as a "stepping stone" to Mars in detail in his Mars Direct [wikipedia.org]plan (started originally in 1990 though I gather he's since changed his opinions on some parts of that plan). The idea is that putting in requirements like lunar or Martian moon infrastructure are needless, complex, costly roadblocks to any Mars exploration. If it happens to be there anyway, then fine, use it. But otherwise don't put them in the plan. KISS. That's one of the double meaning of the title, "Mars Direct" (the other being that the payloads of the missions are all launched directly from Earth to Mars).
Here, throwing in Lunar activity for no good reason, plus the reliance of the project on SLS and Constellation, indicates that this plan isn't serious. It has too many high risk, high cost requirements. My take is that it's just another announcement we can ignore. One or more of the above components will fail hard enough to scuttle the entire approach.
(Score: 2) by ilPapa on Sunday June 09 2019, @05:40AM (1 child)
My favorite thing about the Trump regime is when his followers have to decode what he said into something resembling coherent English.
It's the Emperor's New Words.
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Thursday June 13 2019, @12:43PM
(Score: 2) by takyon on Sunday June 09 2019, @09:35AM
The tweet he sent was poorly written, and it has forced a response:
Trump tweet throws space policy into chaos [spacenews.com]
White House reiterates human moon missions on the path to Mars [spacenews.com]
Despite the "of which the Moon is a part" bit, I don't think it's biased to have had concerns over that tweet when we're talking about an unfunded plan to return to the Moon with boots on the ground. LOP-G has been planned as a stepping stone to Mars (Deep Space Transport) [wikipedia.org], dumb as that is, and that could have been what Trump was referring to. This is not the first time that some tweet Trump sent caused confusion and led to some official having to come out and deny it. This could easily be fixed if Trump delegated tweeting to some assistant or Office of the Press Secretary instead of doing it himself. But we already know that he likes having an unfettered connection to associates and his supporters.
As to the specifics of the SLS + LOP-G + Project Artemis monster, I think it accomplishes one thing. It buys SpaceX some time and funding to get BFR up and running. NASA has pretty much accepted that Falcon Heavy will need to be used to launch some or all LOP-G segments, so that's a potential cash infusion. Then you have a bunch of companies being contracted to land payloads on the Moon [soylentnews.org], and most of them are going to use Falcon 9 to do it. That part of the Moon plan is nice because it's cheap, unmanned, and gets science payloads from fresh, new companies to the Moon (some are from the X-Prize competition).
The actual manned landings may not happen because Project Artemis is maybe getting $1.6 billion in this year's budget, but an additional $20-30 billion or so could be required. So you could imagine it dying if a new Administration shows up. Before that happens, BFR should be ready. NASA officials have expressed interest in BFR, but are only going to start committing to it once it is flying:
https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/06/spacex-working-on-details-of-how-to-get-people-to-mars-and-safely-back/ [arstechnica.com]
The comparison to Falcon Heavy is unfortunate because Falcon 9 took on some of the payloads intended for Heavy as its capabilities improved. But it looks like we'll see BFR hover tests within weeks/months (another static fire in mid-June, possibly hover shortly thereafter), and orbital tests this year. Those will boost confidence and happen just in time to derail stupider pork rockets from being the only consideration for Moon and Mars missions.
I think the only thing we are going to be forced to launch is the LOP-G. A lot of money has been sunk into SLS and the Power and Propulsion Element has a contractor [soylentnews.org]. In summary, I think we'll see LOP-G get built, some landers and rovers sent to the Moon, but no guaranteed manned missions. In the middle of all that, we'll have BFR ready to send to the Moon or Mars. It also looks like SpaceX will have all of its funding needs secured by Starlink, as they are able to launch 60 satellites on a Falcon 9 which is more than anticipated, and only need a fraction of the constellation launched to start operating.
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by takyon on Friday June 07 2019, @07:29PM
Well the charitable take would be to see it as a reference to going to the Moon as a stepping stone to Mars, but that doesn't make sense given the first half of the tweet. So it's just unhinged. No, it's not a reference to Phobos or Deimos.
Whatever the case, I'm sure this gets its own Ars Technica, NASASpaceFlight, etc. articles because this could lead to the imminent death of Project Artemis. Maybe it can be walked back with the help of the ambiguity in the tweet.
Trump adds $1.6 billion to NASA budget request to kick start 'Artemis' moon mission [spaceflightnow.com]
[SIG] 10/28/2017: Soylent Upgrade v14 [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday June 08 2019, @12:43AM (3 children)
If you are going to complain about a text that small you should quote it.
He says NASA should not be TALKING about going to the Moon. - They've already done that 50 years ago, it is not news anymore.
The second part says that "doing ... the Moon" is part of "doing ... Mars". Which it probably should be, a large scale Mars project that ignored the Moon would be stupid. If you are building a bridge you don't spend much time extolling the virtues of the concrete pad on one side of the river, you talk about the bridge.
-
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And this is why you don't understand his supporters. You take the worst and stupidest possible interpretation of what he said and assume it is what he meant. TDS in action.
(Score: 2) by ilPapa on Sunday June 09 2019, @05:44AM (2 children)
He's talking about the bridge he's building when there is no bridge, there's no coherent plan for a bridge and no budget for a bridge. He's babbling incoherently, and you're trying to translate for us native English speakers. it's not working.
I give you credit for that level of loyalty and willing suspension of disbelief. I would like to invite you to our weekly poker game. Bring money.
You are still welcome on my lawn.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 10 2019, @03:06AM
Which would make discussing the specifics of the concrete pad particularly pointless. It's not his job to specify the depth of concrete for the bridge footing, it's his job to stand up the front and say "We Need a Bridge Across this River. We Will Build One. Make it So,
Number OneNASA.".(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday June 11 2019, @03:16PM
Bias is always referring to the other guy's administration as a "regime".
(Score: 2) by Snow on Friday June 07 2019, @07:21PM
The bigger the helicopter, the lower the RPMs of the blades, so comparing the RPMs of what is essentially an RC helicopter to that of a full sized helicopter is stupid.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday June 07 2019, @07:59PM (2 children)
This Mars copter has to be fully autonomous, right? The transmission stats given aren't applicable. The round trip "ping" time to Mars is hours, so an operator on Earth can't possibly fly the copter on Mars. Perhaps an operator can give it a flight plan, but that's about all. Or is there some form of faster than light SciFi communication going on?
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Friday June 07 2019, @09:51PM
For lack of a Mars GPS network, a "flight plan" can only include staying close to the rover itself, so that the helicopter can home on some return beacon to find its charging spot.
Not sure what happens if there is more wind or dust than expected at landing time. Did they put a broom on the arm of the rover to clean the spot or adjust the helicopter if the charging doesn't work?
(Score: 2) by martyb on Saturday June 08 2019, @11:20PM
Mars is not quite that far away. Its orbit varies from about 1.4 AU to about 1.7 AU where 1 AU is the distance from the Earth to the Sun (about 93 million miles). So, the distance from Earth to Mars could vary from a minimum of 0.4 AU to a maximum of 2.7 AU.
As the speed of light is about 186,000 miles per second, that works out to as little as 3.3 minutes and at most 22.5 minutes away.
No matter what, that's too much of a delay for direct control, but that is addressed in the linked article. =)
Wit is intellect, dancing. I'm too old to act my age. Life is too important to take myself seriously.