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Mars Report, April 2023: Ingenuity Helicopter Inspires Future Mars Flights

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter made history when it achieved the first powered, controlled flight on another planet. In this Mars Report, hear an update on the helicopter’s achievements and future plans. Watch this video to see testing for Sample Recovery Helicopters and a future helicopter concept, the Mars Science Helicopter — a proposed six-rotor “hexacopter” that would be about the size of the Perseverance rover.

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Aerospace Motion Control

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    Transcript

    00:00:00 two years ago Ingenuity proved that we could do the impossible we can fly on Mars let's talk about what's next [Music] we're at the surface robotics lab testing is being done on future Mars helicopters Teddy sonatos is here with us today to talk about the helicopter that started it all Ingenuity Teddy

    00:00:23 what's the latest Ingenuity is doing great are babies still flying on the surface of Mars after two Earth years one Mars year of total flight racked up 10 kilometers or 6.2 miles of total distance flown our rotor system our little cell phone processor on board our off-the-shelf Lithium-ion batteries are all doing fantastic one area that we're looking very closely at is our solar

    00:00:43 panel you can imagine after two years of flying on the surface of Mars you'll get some dust on top but we still have an ample margin and ample energy to keep up our flight operations and the extended mission of continue to Scout and push the flight envelope of what's possible the testing being done in this room is part of the next helicopter mission of Mars called the sample recovery

    00:01:00 helicopters the goal is to be a backup to get these samples back to Earth but simply perseverance collects the sample tubes the sample return Lander will retrieve those samples directly from perseverance and then there's a rocket inside of that land that's actually going to send those samples back to Earth as a backup to getting those sample

    00:01:20 tubes from Mars back to the Lander we're designing the next generation of helicopters to not only be able to pick up and carry a sample tube but also drive around on the surface are there any other ways Ingenuity is influencing future Mars exploration we're looking at a research concept called Mars science helicopter it's a hexacopter so six rotors in a ring around a central

    00:01:42 structure about the size of the Rover and you can imagine in the future you'll have fleets of these water science helicopters flying around bringing important payloads to areas of Mars that we've never been able to access before what's next for Ingenuity so we're trying to fly faster when I fly higher

    00:02:00 we've added new offer capability detect Landing sites airborne those sorts of winds are coming from the surface of Mars directly into the design of the new sample recovery helicopters and she's done a fantastic job surpassed any sort of metric of success that anyone on the team could have ever imagined for this little tiny four pound spacecraft

    00:02:23 to get the latest updates on Ingenuity follow at NASA JPL and at NASA Mars on social media or take a deeper dive off the mission websites at mars.nasa.gov [Music]