Just waiting for the first flight on Mars

Discussion in 'Science and Nature' started by Vee, Mar 27, 2021.

  1. #1 Vee, Mar 27, 2021
    Last edited: Mar 27, 2021

    As a pilot we have been fighting about the possibility of this flight, in bars for years lol


    I don't suppose it will be live, so by then we will be very ripped when they do take off


    The argument being 'So how does an aero - foil work if theirs no air, ........no resistance?'
     
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  2. Vostok the martian
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    :D
     
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  3. NASA is about to fly a helicopter on another planet for the first time
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    The first drone on another world is ready to fly. The Ingenuity helicopter is primed to lift off from the surface of Mars on 12 April, which will be the first powered flight on another planet.

    NASA’s Perseverance rover, which launched in July 2020 and arrived on Mars on 18 February, carried the Ingenuity helicopter folded up in its belly. After the rover landed, it dropped Ingenuity onto the ground and drove off so the drone could ready itself for its first flight.

    “It has survived launch, it has survived the journey through space, the vacuum and radiation, it has survived the entry and descent and landing onto the surface on the bottom of the Perseverance rover,” said Bob Balaram at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Ingenuity’s chief engineer, during a 23 March press conference. “Everything we could possibly do on Earth has been done, and now it’s time for us to take that same vehicle to Mars and subject it to the ultimate test.”
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    Ingenuity stands at about half a metre tall and weighs just 1.8 kilograms. It has two rotors that lift the aircraft by spinning in opposite directions 40 times a second, about five times faster than regular helicopter rotors on Earth.

    That speed is partially because of its small size, but partially because it is far harder to fly in the thin Martian atmosphere, which is about 100 times thinner than Earth’s. The drone is a technology demonstration, meant to simply prove that we can make a helicopter fly on Mars, so it doesn’t carry any scientific instruments.

    However, the onboard computer that helps it navigate is about 150 times faster than the one on Perseverance and far more powerful than anything we have sent to another planet before, Balaram said. “If you add up all the computers all the way back that have flown out into the solar system and you sum it all up, we dwarf it,” he said.
    [​IMG]
    (artists pic)
    Such speed is necessary because it takes more than 10 minutes for a signal to travel from Earth to Mars, so Ingenuity will have to fly itself autonomously. The first flight will be relatively simple: the helicopter will fly upward at a rate of about 1 metre per second until it is 3 metres in the air, hover for up to 30 seconds, and descend again. The Perseverance rover will watch from a safe distance, taking images and videos to send back to Earth.

    If that first flight goes well, Ingenuity will perform up to four more tests over the following month, flying higher and manoeuvring a bit more acrobatically. After 30 Martian days – 31 Earth days – its mission will be over, and the Perseverance rover will drive off to begin its own science.

    In the future, drones like this could help robotic missions and even human explorers scout out their surroundings and probe areas that are difficult or impossible to reach over ground. Ingenuity also serves as a sort of miniature preview for NASA’s Dragonfly mission, a much larger drone that will explore Saturn’s moon Titan, which is scheduled to launch in 2027.
     
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  4. I wanted to make a bet but no one would take me up


     
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  5. it takes 20mins to get back to earth...just enough time for a serious work out on the bong!
     

  6. Based on data from the Ingenuity Mars helicopter that arrived late Friday night, NASA has chosen to reschedule the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter’s first experimental flight to no earlier than April 14, so that the Livestream about the flight could happen on April 15. The exact time is TBD. During a high-speed spin test of the rotors on Friday, the command sequence controlling the test ended early due to a “watchdog” timer expiration. This occurred as it was trying to transition the flight computer from ‘Pre-Flight’ to ‘Flight’ mode. The helicopter is safe and healthy and communicated its full telemetry set to Earth. The watchdog timer oversees the command sequence and alerts the system to any potential issues. It helps the system stay safe by not proceeding if an issue is observed and worked as planned. The helicopter team is reviewing telemetry to diagnose and understand the issue. Following that, they will reschedule the full-speed test. Ingenuity arrived at Mars’ Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, attached to the belly of NASA’s Perseverance rover. The helicopter is a technology demonstration with a planned test flight duration of up to 31 days (30 Mars days, or sols). The rover will provide support during flight operations, taking images, collecting environmental data, and hosting the base station that enables the helicopter to communicate with mission controllers on Earth. The flight date may shift as engineers work on the deployments, preflight checks, and vehicle positioning of both Perseverance and Ingenuity, beside its a Government project and 'we' take our time..
    "Vee are you coming to bed?"

    Understand if this thing flies Mars is gonna be covered with millions of Drones in just a year...!
    (more plastic waste)
     
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  7. Still, would be cool to be the first man to grow weed on Mars.
     
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  8. I'm working on it .....lol
     
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  9. My bad everyone's asleep stoned or drunk


    As any win98 owner will recall ...this is where they screw it up ....lol
     
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  10. #10 Vee, Apr 13, 2021
    Last edited: Apr 13, 2021

    If successful, Ingenuity could lead to an aerial dimension to space exploration, aiding both robots and humans in the future. to ad, with drones and robots see it as another wasted plastic planet, this time polluted before 'we' arrive
     
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  11. I'm like waiting till they find an ancient temple...
     
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  12. #12 Vee, Apr 13, 2021
    Last edited: Apr 13, 2021
    [​IMG]

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    21,287metres - 69,839 Feet Coordinates: 18°39′N 226°12′E

    [​IMG]
    Many many temples abound here ...lol Olympus Mons - Wikipedia
     
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  13. ..and I don't have no fancy top end space science degree ...to know that ....lol
     
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  14. Maybe if COVID is not sustained , going to Mars would be an absolute solution lol
     

  15. The drone, called Ingenuity, was airborne for less than a minute, but Nasa is celebrating what represents the first powered, controlled flight by an aircraft on another world.

    Confirmation came via a satellite at Mars which relayed the chopper's data back to Earth.
    The space agency is promising more adventurous flights in the days ahead.
    Ingenuity will be commanded to fly higher and further as engineers seek to test the limits of the technology.

    The rotorcraft was carried to Mars in the belly of Nasa's Perseverance Rover, which touched down in Jezero Crater on the Red Planet in February.

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    We can now say that human beings have flown a rotorcraft on another planet," said a delighted MiMi Aung, project manager for Ingenuity at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.

    "We've been talking for so long about our 'Wright Brothers moment' on Mars, and here it is."

    This is a reference to Wilbur and Orville Wright who conducted the first powered, controlled aircraft flight here on Earth in 1903.
    Ingenuity even carries a small swatch of fabric from one of the wings of Flyer 1, the aircraft that made that historic flight at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina, more than 117 years ago.
    [​IMG]
    There were cheers in the JPL control centre as the first photos of the flight arrived back on Earth. In the background, MiMi Aung could be heard saying: "It's real!"

    To claps from her colleagues, she tore up the contingency speech to have been used in the event of failure.
    The demonstration saw the Mars-copter rise to about 3m, hover, swivel and then set down. In all, it managed almost 40 seconds of flight, from take-off to landing.
    Getting airborne on the Red Planet is not easy. The atmosphere is very thin, just 1% of the density here at Earth. This gives the blades on a rotorcraft very little to bite into to gain lift.
    There's help from the lower gravity at Mars, but still - it takes a lot of work to get up off the ground.

    [​IMG]
    Ingenuity was therefore made extremely light and given the power (a peak power of 350 watts) to turn those blades extremely fast - at over 2,500 revolutions per minute for this particular flight.
    Control was autonomous. The distance to Mars - currently just under 300 million km - means radio signals take minutes to traverse the intervening space. Flying by joystick is simply out of the question.
    Asked whether she was surprised the flight had worked, MiMi Aung said: "No, I'm not. We really had nailed the equations, the models and the verification here on Earth in our laboratory tests. So, it then became a question of: have we chosen the right materials to build Ingenuity, to survive the space environment, to survive the Mars environment?

    "We've gone from 'theory says you can' to really now having done it. It's a major first for the human race," she told BBC News.

    Ingenuity has two cameras onboard. A black-and-white camera that points down to the ground, which is used for navigation, and a high-resolution colour camera that looks out to the horizon.
    A sample navigation image sent back to Earth revealed the helicopter's shadow on the floor of the crater as it came back in to land. Satellites will send home more pictures of the flight over the next day. There was only sufficient bandwidth in the orbiters' first overflight to return a short snatch of video from Perseverance, which was watching and snapping away from a distance of 65m. Longer sequences should become available in due course.
    Nasa has announced that the "airstrip" in Jezero where Perseverance dropped off Ingenuity for its demonstration will henceforth be known as the "Wright Brothers Field".

    The International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) - the United Nations' civil aviation agency - has also presented the Nasa and the US Federal Aviation Administration with an official ICAO
    designator: IGY, call-sign INGENUITY.
    A successful maiden outing means that a further four flights will be attempted over the coming days, each one taking the helicopter further afield.
    The hope is this initial demonstration could eventually transform how we explore some distant worlds.
    Drones might be used to scout ahead for future rovers, and even astronauts once they eventually get to Mars.

    "It's really taking a tool that we haven't been able to use before and putting it in the box of tools that is available for all of our missions going forward at Mars. So for me, it's really exciting personally and for the community overall it opens up new doors,"
    said Dr Thomas Zurbuchen, the head of science at Nasa."We will be able to explore areas where we cannot use a rover. Some of these crater walls, for example, are so exciting; scientists have been writing papers about them."
    Nasa has already approved a helicopter mission to Titan, the big moon of Saturn. Dragonfly, as the mission is known, should arrive at Titan in the mid-2030s.
     
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  16. Right so this is where my fishing drone ended up, hmm:GettingStoned:...
     
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  17. Just think @Digga in years to come theirs gonna be millions of these things on mars working for govts and mining companies, then they die leaving more junk around just like the last planet?
    a pity they can't build one that dissolves after use lol..made of hemp paper naturally ...lol
     
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  18. What will these mining companies do with this mined ore? FedEx it back and put it on display? Build yet a newer i-phone? Schedule deliveries in your lifetime? Will covid affect delivery dates?

    What ever happened to those moon rocks we traded orange powdered drink for?

    Same shit, different day, on a different rock?
     
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  19. thank you for your contribution to my thread

    have a nice day ///
     
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  20. Space Elevators Musk just Hates



    10-20 kg Diamond could pay for the whole deal...?
     

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