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JPL's Plan for the Next Mars Helicopter

spectrum.ieee.org

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Re: JPL's Plan for the Next Mars Helicopter

#61

Post by bobsmooth »

barbegal wrote: post #37

For me, the value of ingenuity has not been the fact that it flies but rather that is designed to be operated in a far more risky way than a traditional rover. A mission that consisted solely of a single larger helicopter would be far more risk averse. It would travel shorter distances, move slower and have so much redundancy built in that there is likely to be little mass dedicated to the scientific instruments.

I think one of the most interesting parts of Ingenuity is that it uses off the shelf ARM processors instead of highly specialized (and old) radiation-hardened processors.

Re: JPL's Plan for the Next Mars Helicopter

#63

Post by Robotbeat »

dogma1138 wrote: post #58
Robotbeat wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s not accurate. You can do math to show a helicopter can fly on Mars. And a helicopter benefits from the lower gravity, which doesn’t help a zeppelin (as buoyancy is also reduced by gravity but lift force is independent of gravity). So even though lift for both a zeppelin and a helicopter include a density term, the zeppelin is about a factor of 3 worse. Since helicopters already outcompete zeppelins on Earth, o…

It’s not about the math it’s about the engineering, NASA did the maths and a 40m diameter evacuated airship can carry a substantial payload on Mars, we however have no real clue on how to build it from an engineering perspective. If you would’ve asked people 10 years ago about flying helicopters on Mars plenty of them would say it’s not possible not because the math doesn’t work out, but because of what requirements…

Fine, engineering it is. And 10 years ago, regardless of what random people on the Internet would've said, we still had the technology to do a Mars helicopter (although the optical navigation has improved and become more lightweight, that could've been offloaded to the rover). It has been studied for decades and we've had good enough solar, batteries, and motors 10 years ago.

A zeppelin could in principle work on Mars, but it'll be worse than a helicopter, all things being equal. Weather balloons can work fine at those air pressures, but they don't control their position.

Re: JPL's Plan for the Next Mars Helicopter

#64

Post by dexwiz »

ekola wrote: post #62

Is there a reason they don't send Boston dynamics robots?

Radiation hardening is a big issue. Commercial components could fail due to ionizing radiation, at a high enough rate that it puts the mission at risk. Also just genera design. Robots that can be easily repaired and recharged have different design parameters than those that have to go to Mars.

Re: JPL's Plan for the Next Mars Helicopter

#66

Post by MichaelZuo »

BotJunkie wrote: post #53
JoeAltmaier wrote: post #42

Lots in here, taking me time to unpack. Kind of blue-sky - 30kG is heavy, so maybe its all moot - who's going to dedicate that much mass to this project. Any geology it does, will be contaminated by rotor wash scrubbing the surface material when it lands. Is that an issue? Maybe its a benefit. Can it really react to sample inaccessible places? What is the response time between capturing an image of a face, and gettin…

I interviewed Bob and wrote this article, so I can answer a few of these. I think JPL's idea is that MSH would be a dedicated helicopter mission, rather than piggybacking on some other mission, so it wouldn't be eating up the mass budget of another lander or rover. Similar to Ingenuity, the flights would be autonomous but the science wouldn't be. MSH would fly up to a cliff face (or whatever), take pictures, land, as…

The rotors would have to be massive to lift 30kg, that may be a stumbling block as it’ll require folding and so on. Seems like it would need a lander at least for recharging right?

Re: JPL's Plan for the Next Mars Helicopter

#67

Post by trhway »

JoeAltmaier wrote: post #42

Lots in here, taking me time to unpack. Kind of blue-sky - 30kG is heavy, so maybe its all moot - who's going to dedicate that much mass to this project. Any geology it does, will be contaminated by rotor wash scrubbing the surface material when it lands. Is that an issue? Maybe its a benefit. Can it really react to sample inaccessible places? What is the response time between capturing an image of a face, and gettin…

>Kind of blue-sky - 30kG is heavy, so maybe its all moot - who's going to dedicate that much mass to this project.

if it is delivered by Starship - and timeframe wise i guess it will be so - then there can be tens of those delivered while not being an even the main mission payload.

Re: JPL's Plan for the Next Mars Helicopter

#68

Post by jvanderbot »

dogma1138 wrote: post #56
jvanderbot wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And how would that be packed into a landing shell?

Just thinking about some solutions - origami of both load baring hard materials and connecting flexible ones, or even do something whacky like have a composite fabric balloon that you inflate and the impregnate with resin insitu then when the resin hardens you have a large shell that can be emptied to create a vacuum.

Put rough numbers to it to check feasibility and submit: https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/niac/index.html

At least one "garage engineer" was selected this last round.

Re: JPL's Plan for the Next Mars Helicopter

#69

Post by ncmncm »

I just hope they have more-experienced engineers to program its control system than on Ingenuity. They were super-lucky on that one. There is absolutely no way that time-registration navigation bug should have been able to have any effect whatsoever on the vehicle's dynamic stability. (You may be sure it wouldn't have, if the Nav guy had done the attitude control too.)

Re: JPL's Plan for the Next Mars Helicopter

#70

Post by irjustin »

> even for a vehicle that was not designed to do much in the way of science at all

Hey hey, demonstrating something is simply possible is definitely "doing science".

That's half the battle!

> We were just telling the scientists, think big

"But not too big..." - Every engineer after the first guy.

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