NASA Perseverance Rover: Exploring Mars

Vertigo said:
Yes, and, though I might be wrong, I don't think the rover has any mechanism to pick it up again. I suspect any such mechanism would have ended up weighing more than Ingenuity itself!
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There's a video somewhere on the NASA website that shows the test deploying the helicopter back at base. The thing is 'folded' somehow under the belly of Perseverance and the deployment looks quite complicated. I would imagine reversing the procedure would be quite complex.
 
mosaix said:
There's a video somewhere on the NASA website that shows the test deploying the helicopter back at base. The thing is 'folded' somehow under the belly of Perseverance and the deployment looks quite complicated. I would imagine reversing the procedure would be quite complex.
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Yes that's exactly right:
Dropping Ingenuity off in its flight zone is “a very prescribed and meticulous process,” said Farah Alibay, who leads Ingenuity’s integration with Perseverance. Ingenuity will need to be flipped from its current horizontal position on the rover to a vertical position before touching the ground, which will take “multiple days,” she said. “The most stressful day, at least for me, is gonna be that last day while we finally separate the helicopter and drop Ingenuity on the ground.”
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Worth noting that "drop Ingenuity on the ground" which indicates to me that it doesn't lower it and so doesn't have the ability to pick it up. And even after that they must spend around 25 hours moving the rover "about 330 feet" away before doing the test flight. (Interesting distance that. Shows that whilst NASA communicate to their [largely] American audience in feet they are actually [sensibly] doing stuff themselves in metric ie. 100m away!!!)

Edited to add: I've just checked and the video demonstrating the 'delivery system' is at 5:11 on this video NASA Mars Helicopter Ingenuity Media Reel | Mars Video and at the end you can see it being dropped. Looking at this I can see no way it will get picked up again.
 
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.matthew. said:
Telescopic stick + Magnet = Profit?
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Much more than that needed (not sure where profit comes in on a project like this though); the telescopic stick would have to be powered, I doubt a magnet would work as there is probably very little, if any, magnetic material on the helicopter and certainly not on its top where the blades are which I expect are some sort of carbon fibre. Once picked up it would have to be folded away otherwise it would catch on rocks whilst the rover is driving and really it would need its protective cover to be replaced for that also. All of this would require more weight and every gramme is critical on a mission like this. Watch that video to see how it is carried prior to deployment.
 
It was a joke :eek:

But at the same time the weight issue only really comes into play on the way out of our atmosphere so there's little reason they couldn't send multiple subassemblies and bolt them together outside the ISS or something :)
 
.matthew. said:
It was a joke :eek:

But at the same time the weight issue only really comes into play on the way out of our atmosphere so there's little reason they couldn't send multiple subassemblies and bolt them together outside the ISS or something :)
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Not entirely true, it comes very much into play, possibly even more importantly, on the landing and getting its speed down. And I'm not sure anywhere in space is yet geared up for doing such assembly. The bottom line is that this has been done on the cheap (relatively of course) as a proof of concept. If successful they will, I'm sure, do something much more sophisticated. I suspect one of the problems is that it can probably only receive and send instructions when close to the Rover as I doubt it has any radio capability over significant distances. Weight again.
 
The batteries last 90 seconds, takes about a day to recharge. That's a big problem. Where it lands is critical, it has to land in a flat area where it can take off again. Sounds more like a forerunner to the pterosaurs. The shell and wings are Martian weather resistant, made of lightweight composite material, like an insect. I wonder how long it will be before they will be able to land on a perch and fold up the wings to fit inside some kind of protective carrier. One big problem is a bad landing where the helicopter drone gets tangled up in an antenna or other sensing mechanism. Probably have to set up a base where a fleet of them could be stored. At the end of the day, air power is superior to land and sea power. A communications satellite or a network of them, orbiting Mars, could solve the problem of staying in communication.
 
It always amazes me how far in front of what I think is "really" possible the razor edge of technology really is. Landing a rover on Mars with the real possibility of a "helicopter" still fit for flying boggles my mind. I would count it a success even if the technical glitches prove too much to handle.

---

Also, who would have thought any kind of roving and flying would be possible with the speed of light delay? Not me. --- I'm probably too anxious to get going to settle for a few meters a day progress.
 
Parson said:
It always amazes me how far in front of what I think is "really" possible the razor edge of technology really is. Landing a rover on Mars with the real possibility of a "helicopter" still fit for flying boggles my mind. I would count it a success even if the technical glitches prove too much to handle.

---

Also, who would have thought any kind of roving and flying would be possible with the speed of light delay? Not me. --- I'm probably too anxious to get going to settle for a few meters a day progress.
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Agree that just getting it there in one piece is amazing and if you read the NASA pages that is also considered a success in its own right. Then there's the issue of flying a helicopter in such a thin atmosphere. I'm amazed they have managed that one. We can't fly helicopters as high as our highest mountains due to the thin air. Regarding the control with the transmission delay you are absolutely right about it being impossible to control in real time, it is also equally impossible to 'drive' the rover in real time. So in both cases they must tell them precisely what they are to do - complete flight/drive plan - and then they have to figure the rest out for themselves. Quite remarkable really!
 
The speed of light delays of fifteen minutes plus mean that both the rover and copter have to be self autonomous.
NASA tells the vehicle where to go and it uses its brain and programming to accomplish that, hopefully avoiding obstacles along the way, obviously because of the time delays remote piloting is simply impossible, hence the autonomy.
Even on the Moon the signal there and back is roughly two point six seconds making direct remoting very difficult.
 
Brian G Turner said:
And the short version. :)

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Yeah, that one didn't appear on their website for quite a while. I'd guess the video took a little bit longer to transmit. But it's pretty wild; video of an aircraft flying on Mars. How cool is that? (And I really don't care if using cool makes me look old.... it is cool!!!).
 
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