A series of articles in AAPG EXPLORER
has been following the progress
of the Mars 2020 Perseverance
rover since its launch on July 30, 2020.
Perseverance landed in Jezero Crater on
Mars on Feb. 18, 2021 with an EXPLORER
Live! panel and audience. Perseverance has
been performing systems checks, executed
its first drives, and zapped a few rocks
for analysis with its SuperCam laser. Now
we have witnessed the deployment of the
Ingenuity helicopter for the first-in-history
aerial, powered flight on another planet.
Since landing, Perseverance has tested
its new wheels on a winding course with
about 900 feet of wheel tracks from where
it landed to its current location monitoring
Ingenuity.
Ingenuity is a small coaxial, drone
rotorcraft. It is about half a meter high and
weighs only 4 pounds. It has the potential
to scout geologic locations of interest and
to help plan routes for Mars rovers. The
helicopter is capable of delivering terrain
images ten times sharper than orbital
images.
The difficulty of lift in an atmosphere
1/100 as dense as Earth’s is only partially
offset by Mars’ gravity being one-third that
of Earth. The helicopter’s contra-rotating,
carbon fiber, coaxial rotor blades are about
1.2 meters in diameter and rotate at 2400
rpm to achieve lift in the thin atmosphere.
Ingenuity is equipped with inertial
sensors, a laser altimeter, two navigational
cameras and a communication system to
relay data to the Perseverance rover. The
downward-looking navigational cameras
are high-resolution cameras for navigation,
landing and science-surveying of the
terrain.
Deployment
Ingenuity Mars helicopter chief engineer
Bob Balaram explained deployment to The
Robot Report, “The (Ingenuity) debris shield
is jettisoned using a pyrotechnic cable
cutter, then the helicopter moves into the
actual drop spot.”
“Then there is a cable cutter, which lets
Ingenuity swing down towards vertical
... So once we are vertical, the same
process releases two of our landing legs.
There is another final cable cutter, which
releases the remaining two landing legs.
We then ask the rover to charge our
lithium ion batteries to a full 100-percent
charge because we want to make sure
that we survive overnight if needed as
the rover drives off. Until our solar panels
are exposed, we don’t get charge into our
helicopter.”
Ingenuity was successfully deployed
from Perseverance to the surface of Mars
from March 28 to April 7, 2021 (Sol 38-47).
Flight Course and Flight Plans
After deployment, Ingenuity’s rotor
blades were tested. Ingenuity’s first flight
was originally planned for April 8 but a
“command sequence issue was identified
on Sol 49 (April 9) during a planned highspeed
spin-up test of the helicopter’s
rotors,” according to a press statement
issued by NASA.
A complex flight software solution will
be programmed and tested on Earth and
then uploaded to Mars so that Ingenuity
can boot up the new flight software.
The Ingenuity helicopter is planned
to fly five times during its planned 30-
day test period. The test flights will be at
altitudes ranging from 10–16 feet above
the ground, lasting up to 90 seconds per
flight, and ranging as far as 160 feet before
returning to its launch area. Ingenuity will
use autonomous control programmed by
operators at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Images and telemetry will be relayed to the
Perseverance rover after each flight.
Perseverance will attempt to document
Ingenuity’s flights. “We plan to use
our video capability and our telephoto
capability,” Perseverance Mastcam-Z
principal investigator Jim Bell of Arizona
State University said. “It’ll be very exciting,
and we’re looking forward to those historic,
aviation-first kind of movies.”
After Ingenuity’s debut, Perseverance
will begin geologic exploration of Jezero
Crater. Perseverance JPL project scientist
Ken Farley said, “The mission team has
already mapped out a tentative traverse,
which would take the rover through the
delta region, up onto Jezero’s rim and onto
the plains beyond the crater.”
The rover will look for signs of possible
past life in Jezero crater’s geology, where
there is evidence that a lake existed 3.5
billion years ago. River channels filled the
crater, created a lake and deposited deltaic
sediments. The rover’s instruments will
test the geochemistry of crater sediments
to select samples to be drilled, cached and
returned to Earth by 2031 on a separate
mission.