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© Copyright 2021 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed without permission.NASA's Mars helicopter achieves 1st powered flight by an aircraft on another planet
By MARCIA DUNN CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla©2024 GPlusMedia Inc.
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ulysses
Watched all of it and it was exhilarating.
Well done NASA.
GdTokyo
Outstanding! Way to go, NASA.
snowymountainhell
Awesome Job, NASA! “First in Flight on Mars” is a remarkable feat!
SuperLib
Pretty cool stuff. The research should pay off for quite some time.
theFu
I'm still freaking out over the $85M spent for something that it planned to work for 1 month. As a tax payer, I'm a little miffed. High risk would have been $500K for the project. When you know the density of the atmosphere and use electric power, flight (thrust greater than weight) can be calculated for a counter-rotating helicopter using basic math. Put the craft into a low pressure container and test with the same design of atmosphere and you'll know it will work on a planet with less mass/gravity.
Not really linked to the Wright brothers, IMHO.
Kids were throwing gliders well before the Wright Bros got their aircraft to the top of the hill, started the engine, slid down the hill on wood runners (no wheels back then), got sufficient take-off lift from the speed and headwind, and had Orville Wright on board for the first powered flight of 12 seconds, 120ft, on Dec 17, 1903.
Wilbur flew 175ft later that day followed by Orville for 200ft. The big flight was Wilbur with 852ft.
For a few years the Wright Bros were testing gliders at Kitty Hawk beginning in 1900, but they also tested back in Dayton at a field they rented at the end of a train line. They learned from failures by other people trying to achieve powered flight - mainly, to stay low. The difference between a bad day and death was going above 20ft altitude.
As you might guess, there are museums at Kitty Hawk and a few places in Dayton for these achievements. The Wright Brothers were careful to document everything, file patents. They were capitalists first and foremost.
You can fly into an airfield about 500m away from the hill+field where they had those 1st flights, if you have a small aircraft.
Anyway - when a human is on Mars flying in an aircraft, then THAT will be linked.
I'm a huge NASA fan. Worked at JSC for 7 yrs. JPL does excellent work too, but without a human, it just isn't the same.
egads man!
This doesn't account for the wind though.
Desert Tortoise
As a helicopter pilot I know a stable hover is an acquired skill that often requires considerable concentration. I liken it to standing on a basketball. So NASA goes and does it with an unmanned helo on another planet far enough away that real time communications are impossible. Impressive indeed. My helmet is off to them. Bravo Zulu NASA.
OssanAmerica
Quick, put the Stars and Stripes up before you know who puts up a flag and claims Mars has been their inherent territory since ancient times.
lostrune2
Due to Mars' much thinner atmosphere, the physics calculations would be much different than Earth's. There's no real-world equivalent (outside labs) that they can base it on - ya can't predict everything that could happen
(But it's not like they can send engineers to fix the helicopter if it runs into problems)
They pretty much have to do almost everything right even though it's all experimental stage (and y'know how much things can go wrong in experimental stage - look at SpaceX's early experiments). And ya need sensors and data collection on everything - so if things do go wrong, ya know how it went wrong and thus avoid making the same mistakes in the future (as mentioned, ya can't just later send engineers to study a crash site and piece together where it went wrong)
chikv
Even in these difficult times it is nice to have such good news, the effort of countless people making humankind advance in leaps
theFu
No. The calculations are the same. Just the initial conditions are different for density, temperature, weight, thrust and the needed rpms were known years ago. I've spent months doing wind tunnel testing of aircraft in grad school. I didn't work on helicopters - just small prop aircraft in those specific studies. We built a model that would predict how a specific plane would behave and validated it with wind tunnel testing. This was many decades ago. It is most interesting when the model predicts flight characteristics that haven't been seen because nobody would flight a real plane that way .... then we'd test in the wind tunnel and see the prediction come true. We handed over the data to the plane manufacturer, but I'd moved on before I heard if they had tested it with a full-sized aircraft. People don't really like to risk 20-seat planes in tests after they are certified.
JPL did test this drone in a controlled atmosphere. They pumped all the air out and made it as dense as the Martian "air" for those tests. Winds on Mars don't push the same as wind on Earth due to the lack of density.
Over 50% of all drones made today can hover. F/LOSS drone flight control software is readily available that can hover and fly a desired path. One example: https://github.com/alduxvm/DronePilot
https://dev.to/korigod/open-source-framework-to-start-programming-drones-within-an-hour-4b0l
It is true they can't predict everything that might happen. They can drastically reduce those unknowns by not flying on windy days, staying relatively near the ground, monitoring the temperatures. Off of those things were run in simulations, if not actually tested inside huge test chambers on Earth. For example:
https://www.nasa.gov/ames/wind-tunnels Check out the NFAC.
Sven Asai
While just very near and here amidst us thousands die in the ICUs from a very small virus. Flying around there on Mars with a little remote controlled toy helicopter, that’s surely not a triumph, that’s just absolutely crazy and childish, too expensive, completely useless and unnecessary.
Desert Tortoise
You could not be more wrong. The star at the center of our solar system, the Sun, has a limited lifetime. At some point in the future it will fuse the last of its hydrogen and when that day comes it will rapidly expand into a red giant with a diameter greater than the orbit of Earth. Earth and all the inner planets of our solar system will be incinerated. If man is to perpetuate itself it must become a multi-planet species. To do so we must master long distance space flight and techniques for exploring other worlds. Man will likely have to master bioengineering planets to make them hospitable for not just humans but all the other plants and animals that make up our world. The exploration of Mars, the rovers and this little helicopter are part of the learning necessary to preserve and perpetuate our species knowing that eventually Earth will be destroyed by the very star that made life possible on it. It is of the utmost importance to succeed.
Desert Tortoise
And demands not to trespass within the "Nine Dash Orbit" ......