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Mahesh

21/01/24 09:41 AM IST

The Ingenuity helicopter

In News
  • The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) lost contact with its Mars helicopter Ingenuity towards the end of its 72nd flight on the red planet.
Ingenuity mission
  • On July 30, 2020, NASA launched a spacecraft towards Mars, carrying the Perseverance rover, which had Ingenuity attached to its belly.
  • On February 18, 2021, Perseverance successfully landed on the red planet.
  • However, it wasn’t until April 4 that the helicopter was deployed on the surface.
  • It was only after the rover reached a suitable “airfield” location, it released Ingenuity to the surface.
  • While the rover’s mission was to study signs of ancient life, and collect samples that might be sent back to Earth during future missions, Ingenuity was sent to Mars as an experiment to test powered, controlled flight on another world for the first time
Significance
  • Flight at Mars is challenging because the Red Planet has a significantly lower gravity – one-third that of Earth’s – and an extremely thin atmosphere with only 1% the pressure at the surface compared to our planet.
  • This means there are relatively few air molecules with which Ingenuity’s two 4-foot-wide (1.2-meter-wide) rotor blades can interact to achieve flight.
  • Ingenuity is an autonomous aircraft. It’s piloted by onboard guidance, navigation, and control systems running algorithms developed by the team at JPL.
  • Perseverance acts as a relay between the chopper and Earth.
  • Mars is more than 225 million kilometres away right now. The distance between the two planets means that it takes between 5 to 20 minutes for a signal to travel from one to another.
  • Adding to this signal delay, Ingenuity also has to survive the harsh conditions on Mars. The low atmospheric density on the planet means that Ingenuity must work much harder than helicopters here on Earth in order to be able to fly.
  • Also, it has had to survive “continent-sized” dust storms in the past and other Martian hazards in the past.
Source- Indian Express

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