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Genuine Ingenuity: The Most Extreme Flights of NASA’s Mars Helicopter

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter pushed aerodynamic limits and set records during the final months of its mission. Watch this video to hear Ingenuity Chief Engineer Travis Brown detail how the data the team collected — over the course of Ingenuity’s 72 total flights before succumbing to career-ending rotor-blade damage — could eventually be used in future rotorcraft designs.

Topics:
Aerospace Autonomy Motion Control Positioning Equipment Unmanned Air Vehicles/Systems (UAV/UAS)

More From SAE Media Group

    Transcript

    00:00:00 [Music] the Ingenuity Mars helicopter was designed to push the limits and I'm going to show you how we've taken it to the extreme today we're here in the aerial Vehicles Lab at NASA's jet propulsion laboratory where we develop prototype helicopters Ingenuity started off as a tech demo to push the aeronautical

    00:00:19 boundaries over the course of five flights then we transitioned into an operational demo phase where we partnered with the perseverance Rover to do science and scouting but about a year ago when the perseverance Rover started racing up the jro crater Delta we actually found that we had to work pretty hard to stay ahead of the Rover we decided it was time to

    00:00:37 shift gears again once again pushing the boundaries of Martian flight this campaign really began in Earnest with flight 49 where we simultaneously set new speed and altitude records by flight 62 we had nearly doubled our max speed and doubled our Max altitude we also tested different Landing speeds faster to save energy and

    00:00:59 slower to reduce Landing loads both of these strategies may be used on future helicopters We performed a type of flight testing called system identification this is a crucial but risky procedure that helps us understand the vehicle's performance by how it responds our team also devised new ways to Target the high resolution camera which allows us to provide Advanced

    00:01:19 reconnaissance Imaging for the Rover and we were able to take stunning shots like this one of Bela crer from flight 51 in addition Ingenuity conducted several first of their kind experiments on Martian wind and dust movement which gave us new insight into the Martian atmosphere what we've learned will help us design the next generation of Martian rotorcraft we're testing more efficient

    00:01:44 blades we're also working on a Mars science helicopter concept that could potentially transport heavier payloads and take us to more exciting locations on Mars when people look back at Ingenuity I really hope that they see how much this one small helicopter has done to elevate the limits of human achievement