How did NASA’s Ingenuity Helicopter fly on Mars?
Helicopters require an atmosphere to fly, but on its 25th trip last month, NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter made records by flying faster and further than ever before with such a limited atmosphere on Mars.#MarsHelicopter
image:NASA
There are several technological challenges to conducting a helicopter flight in another world. First, and most significantly, helicopters need an atmosphere to fly. A helicopter journey to another planet presents various technological obstacles. First and foremost, helicopters require an environment in order to fly.
With a lot of dedication and diligence. They reasoned that a comparable energy expenditure might still lift such a device in the thin atmosphere if it had sufficiently high performance, so they designed it such that the lightweight propellers could spin at extremely high speeds and got it to work in a vacuum chamber.
The black-and-white navigation camera on the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter caught breathtaking footage of its record-breaking 25th journey on April 8. It was the longest and fastest flight of the Red Planet rotorcraft to date, travelling a distance of 2,310 feet (704 metres) at a speed of 12 mph (5.5 metres per second). (At the moment, Ingenuity is planning for its 29th trip.)
“Ingenuity’s downward-looking navigation camera gave us a spectacular feeling of what it would feel like to glide 33 feet over the surface of Mars at 12 miles per hour during our record-breaking mission,” said Teddy Tzanetos of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. #MarsHelicopter
