By Mark McGreal, staff writer, and Marcia Dunn, The Associated Press
For years, engineers and computer scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge and AeroVironment in Simi Valley hammered away at their vision of a helicopter that could fly on Mars. It must be light. It must be energy efficient. It must be rugged. It must be smart.
They saw their work pay off in the wee hours of Monday, April 19 when Ingenuity rose about 10 feet off the ground and flew for 39 seconds. It wasn’t a lofty altitude or a long journey, but it was nonetheless historic — the first powered flight by an aircraft on another planet.
Project manager MiMi Aung was jubilant as she ripped up the papers holding the plan in case the flight had failed. “We’ve been talking so long about our Wright Brothers moment, and here it is,” she said.
Capturing the aura of the trail-blazing mission, the nimble, 4-pound mini-copter was affixed with fabric from those aviation pioneers’ hand-built plane that flew for the first time at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina on Dec. 17, 1903.
The helicopter hovered for 30 seconds at its planned altitude of 10 feet, and spent 39 seconds airborne, more than three times longer than the first successful flight of the Wright Flyer, which lasted a mere 12 seconds.
The autonomous solar-powered helicopter — piloted by onboard guidance systems, navigation and control systems running complex algorithms — was supposed to take flight last week but a technical issue delayed the liftoff. That technical glitch, however, didn’t really worry AeroVironment employee Sara Langberg, an aeromechanical engineer on the project.
“I had full confidence in all the engineering that’s gone into Ingenuity,” Langberg said. “I was pretty anxious to get to first flight and wasn’t thrilled about having to wait a little longer, but I know that taking the time to do it right was the way to go.”
Monday’s mission proceeded as planned, and Ingenuity performed in the dusty air of the red planet as it was projected to during hundreds of simulations conducted at JPL.
Flight controllers at JPL declared success after receiving the data and images via the Perseverance rover. Ingenuity hitched a ride to Mars aboard Perseverance, clinging to the rover’s belly upon their arrival in an ancient river delta in February.
The $85 million helicopter demo was considered high risk, yet high reward. “Each world gets only one first flight,” Aung observed earlier this month.
Scientists cheered the news.
“A whole new way to explore the alien terrain in our solar system is now at our disposal,” Nottingham Trent University astronomer Daniel Brown said from England.
This first test flight — with more to come by Ingenuity — holds great promise, Brown noted. Future helicopters could serve as otherworldly scouts for rovers, and eventually astronauts, in difficult, dangerous locales.
Ground controllers had to wait more than three excruciating hours before learning whether the pre-programmed flight had succeeded more than 170 million miles away.
When the news finally came, the operations center filled with applause, cheers and laughter. More followed when the first black and white photo from Ingenuity appeared, showing the helicopter’s shadow as it hovered above the surface of Mars.
Next came stunning color video of the copter’s clean landing, taken by Perseverance, “the best host little Ingenuity could ever hope for,” Aung said in thanking everyone.
To accomplish all this, the helicopter’s twin, counter-rotating rotor blades needed to spin at 2,500 revolutions per minute — five times faster than on Earth. With an atmosphere just 1 percent the thickness of Earth’s, engineers had to build a helicopter light enough — with blades spinning fast enough — to generate this otherworldy lift.
More than six years in the making, Ingenuity is just 19 inches tall, a spindly four-legged chopper. Its fuselage, containing all the batteries, heaters and sensors, is the size of a tissue box. The carbon-fiber, foam-filled rotors are the biggest pieces: Each pair stretches 4 feet tip to tip.
Ingenuity also had to be sturdy enough to withstand the Martian wind, and is topped with a solar panel for recharging the batteries, crucial for surviving the minus-130 degree Fahrenheit (minus-90 degree-Celsius) Martian nights.
NASA chose a flat, relatively rock-free patch for Ingenuity’s airfield, measuring 33 feet by 33 feet. Following Monday’s success, NASA named the Martian airfield “Wright Brothers Field.”
“While these two iconic moments in aviation history may be separated by time and 173 million miles of space, they now will forever be linked,” NASA’s science missions chief Thomas Zurbuchen announced.
The little chopper with a giant job attracted attention from the moment it launched with Perseverance last July. Even Arnold Schwarzenegger joined in the fun, rooting for Ingenuity over the weekend via Twitter. “Get to the chopper!” he shouted, re-enacting a line from his 1987 sci-fi film “Predator.”
Up to five increasingly ambitious flights are planned, and they could lead the way to a fleet of Martian drones in decades to come, providing aerial views, transporting packages and serving as lookouts for human crews. On Earth, the technology could enable helicopters to reach new heights, doing things like more easily navigating the Himalayas.
“This gives us amazing hope for all of humanity,” Zurbuchen tweeted. Indeed, JPL’s mantra, “Dare Mighty Things,” was printed on a wall of the control room.
Ingenuity’s team has until the beginning of May to complete the test flights so that the rover can get on with its main mission: collecting rock samples that could hold evidence of past Martian life, for return to Earth a decade from now.
The team plans to be increasingly daring until Ingenuity’s final flight, testing its limits and possibly even wrecking the craft, leaving it to rest in place forever, having sent its data back home.
And the engineers can’t wait to test its limits in the little drone’s final flight.
“I think that’s what’s going to be exciting to see in the next few flights,” said Ben Pipenberg, the project’s engineering lead, “is just how hard we can push it.”
