NASA/JPL-CALTECH IMAGE
Taking commands from the rover on the ground, Ingenuity lifts off amid a barren red vista in this artist’s depiction.
parallels to the Wright brothers’ first flight, in 1903. “We’ve been thinking for so long about having our Wright
brothers moment on Mars, and here it is,” says Aung. “We’ll celebrate our success and then take a cue from Orville and Wilbur regarding what to do next. History shows they got back to work, and so will we.” To immortalize that moment when the first successful
powered flight occurred, NASA removed a small piece of fabric from the wing of the Wright Flyer and glued it to Ingenuity’s solar panel before its trip to Mars. In another fitting tribute, the agency officially named the spot on Mars where the helicopter lifted off Wright Brothers Field. Te 33-by-33-ft. plot is now recognized by the International Civil Aviation Organization.
Ingenuity Is Just the Beginning As Ingenuity performs more-ambitious flights on Mars, its success represents just the first step in exploring the planet by helicopter. NASA is planning a second generation of larger, more capable rotorcraft down the road that will lead the way in further space exploration. Te agency will use nontraditional blades (for greater
tip speeds), advanced batteries, and more-powerful motors. Eventually, the most advanced class of helicopters may exceed 50 lb., according to engineers at JPL. Tese rotorcraft will operate independently from a rover
and will likely have their own ground stations. Utilizing the inherent advantages of flight, they’ll cover more ground and explore areas rovers can’t reach, fetching rock, soil, and ice samples for study. Tree more helicopters are on
the drawing board, two of them coaxial and the third a hexacopter—which, as its name implies, sports six rotors—to mostly support rovers and landers, according to the NASA report “An Advanced Mars Helicopter Design.” Te next helicopter will weigh 10 lb. and have the same blade diameter as the 4-lb. Ingenuity. After that, NASA will take an even bigger leap, with a 44 pounder sporting a 5½-ft. blade diameter. A hexacopter, also weighing 44 lb., will finally fly on Mars. Each of its blades will measure 3 ft. long. Unlike Ingenuity, which has no payload capacity, the advanced helicopters are expected to have payloads of at least 3 lb. each. After Mars, NASA is scheduled to send Dragonfly, a
10-ft., 990-lb., nuclear-powered rotorcraft the size of a car, to Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. Te launch is scheduled for 2027, and it will take about nine years for the aircraft to reach Titan, which has an atmosphere four times thicker than Earth’s. Whereas Ingenuity had to be designed with care in order
to fly in the thin Martian atmosphere, Titan’s dense atmo- sphere and low gravity will make for easier flying than on Mars. Titan’s diameter is 3,200 miles compared with the Earth’s moon, at 2,100 miles. “It’s remarkable to think of this rotorcraft flying miles
and miles across the organic sand dunes of Saturn’s largest moon,” said Tomas Zurbuchen, NASA’s associate admin- istrator for the agency’s Science Mission Directorate, in a statement. “Dragonfly will visit a world filled with a wide variety of organic compounds, which are the building blocks of life.”
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