Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

The Mars Helicopter Is Online and Getting Ready to Fly

universetoday.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 265 posts

Re: The Mars Helicopter Is Online and Getting Ready to Fly

#141

Post by alexvoda »

birktj wrote: post #84
marcinzm wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the name RAD750 indicates, that processor is designed to be radiation hardened which matters for longer missions. I doubt the Snapdragon 801 will survive as long or have as few errors but it also doesn't matter since Ingenuity isn't aimed for long term usage.

What I imagine for long lived and high-cost missions is using some sort of co-processor setup with a radiation hardened processor and a faster and more modern processor. These rovers run a lot of computer vision algorithms and I believe more powerful hardware would be quite useful. They may already do something like this, however my understanding is that there is a lot of skepticism in integrating these less fault-to…

I wonder if it wouldn't have been possible to do this on Perseverance too. After Ingenuitys mission is done they could have lugged it arround for extra processing power for as long as it survives. I doubt the extra weight causes that much extra energy consumption.

The software stack is probably not ready for that since the plan is to abandon it after its mission. And the Zigbee protocol is rather limmited.

Re: The Mars Helicopter Is Online and Getting Ready to Fly

#142

Post by azernik »

rwmj wrote: post #6

Wikipedia page about the Ingenuity helicopter: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingenuity_(helicopter) I didn't realise it was so large (1.8 kg, 1.2 m diameter rotors). I suppose it has to have the large rotors to be able to generate lift in the thin atmosphere, 1/160th of the density [edit: pressure, not density - thanks Robotbeat] of the earth's atmosphere at sea level according to the article.

This apparently also introduces some serious control issues - with propellers that long and massive, there's substantial lag between control inputs and flight changes. In ground tests in pressure chambers, it was difficult-to-impossible to manually pilot the thing, and even under computer control it's very clearly shakier than Earth-atmosphere drones.

Re: The Mars Helicopter Is Online and Getting Ready to Fly

#144

Post by monkeydreams »

rhino369 wrote: post #128
tus89 wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If we understand "flight" as being the use of a wing to generate lift in an atmosphere, then I think we can safely say this is the first time we have flown on another planet. I assume this little helicopter actually has rotary wings rather than fans.

The common understanding of flight definitely doesn't include lighter than air (well atmosphere in this case) vehicles. The first flight was in 1903, not 300 BC China when they used sky lanterns.

> The first flight was in 1903

The first powered flight was in 1903, with the criteria that it was not gravity assisted, that it was sustained and that it was controlled. No one is claiming that it was the first flight ever.

Re: The Mars Helicopter Is Online and Getting Ready to Fly

#145

Post by NikolaeVarius »

tal8d wrote: post #114
lights0123 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> perhaps performance absolutely performance. Yes to the other three for sure, but the engineers reported that there was no way they were running flight control using image tracking on a 200MHz CPU.

Not in python, maybe. Smartbombs have been doing the necessary image processing with much less processing power, on much less capable sensors, for a long time.

What. I dont understand how you can make this claim. Guided bombs are NOT using CV with optical cameras. They use lasers, GPS, and other non "fancy" techniques.

I just don't get in what world you think military munitions are using CV for targeting bombs.

Re: The Mars Helicopter Is Online and Getting Ready to Fly

#146

Post by alexvoda »

Asraelite wrote: post #133
MayeulC wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not necessarily; physical size matters a lot. Just an example: consider you were to add some extra electrical charge to the gate of a transistor (from an electron or ion beam, I don't know). A larger transistor has a higher gate capacitance, it is therefore quite immune against a few extra charges. On smaller transistors, though, it could dramatically increase the voltage, leading to a bit error, or destroying the tr…

This raises the question, why not simply continue to make larger circuits today for this purpose? Surely we could still make a chip today with the same transistor size as one from 2001, but better in other ways.

I believe the reason is that volume is too low. The radiation hardened chips for Curiosity and Perseverance are variants of Power chips made by BAE. I am surprised though that they have not released any newer chip in time for Percy. There is a newer generation, the 5500, but I believe it was not ready for Percy. Percy uses the same chip as Curio.

Re: The Mars Helicopter Is Online and Getting Ready to Fly

#147

Post by holoduke »

mrbonner wrote: post #40

Watching the PBS NOVA series “Finding life on Mars” I am so proud to see such an astounding diversity of ethnicities involved in the Mars 2020 projects. I can’t phantom any other countries would have inclusively included other ethnicities in such a high profile project. Despite so many set backs in 2020, the US is still the most inclusive country at least in science and research.

Have you been at the ESA stations in Europe. Lots of diversity there. Even in Russia you have loads of foreigners working. About China I am not so sure though

Re: The Mars Helicopter Is Online and Getting Ready to Fly

#148

Post by holoduke »

laydn wrote: post #25

Why is nobody worried about the helicopter crashing to the rover and possibly destroying a science instrument? How far will the helicopter be from the rover?

Of course they worried. That's why the first flight will just be a accent of 3 meters.

Re: The Mars Helicopter Is Online and Getting Ready to Fly

#149

Post by alexvoda »

newsbinator wrote: post #135
mhh__ wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why would SpaceX bother doing science, though? If you imagine a project like Voyager, you might think they just dump the data and "go home" (not quite, obviously) but to analyse the data and to know what to look for they had to hire geologists and meteorologists (for example) along with the planetary scientists and co. NASA should be about long term and expensive projects, SpaceX is just a tool to achieve that goal w…

SpaceX will do any science that’s profitable in the near/mid term

Musk will do everything to achieve his dream of colonising Mars.

Re: The Mars Helicopter Is Online and Getting Ready to Fly

#150

Post by ChuckMcM »

julienchastang wrote: post #93

Fun fact: This is not the first time a space program has flown on another planet. The Soviets launched weather balloons on Venus during the Venera missions [1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vega_program#Balloon

And given the density of Venus' atmosphere, here is a fun thought experiment.

It may be possible to make 'titanium' balloons for longer term operation. The would work by creating the balloon envelope on earth, have a sealing mechanism that you activated in orbit so they had vacuum inside. And then drop them into the atmosphere.

Same idea a glass floats on fishing nets[1] except with titanium (so they can withstand the compression forces given they have a vacuum inside). It might be useful/necessary to put some additional structure inside the envelope for strength but like eggs, the sphere is a pretty good shape for distributing compressive force.

Anyway, put a number of them on tethers attached to the instrument payload and drop it off into the atmosphere once you've gone trans-sonic with parachutes or retro rockets. The platform will then fall to the point where the lifting force of the floats is equal to the weight of the platform.

Ideally the titanium would be impervious to the atmospherics's corrosive effects.

[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glass_float

Post reply on HN