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JPL's Plan for the Next Mars Helicopter

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Re: JPL's Plan for the Next Mars Helicopter

#81

Post by ekola »

dexwiz wrote: post #64
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.

True, it won't be easy, but better than sending people there. Spend some billions and in 10 years bring some robots, and explore the planet without risking any human life.

Re: JPL's Plan for the Next Mars Helicopter

#82

Post by BotJunkie »

akiselev wrote: post #79
BotJunkie wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

> MSH would be able to communicate with orbit directly and would not need rover or lander support. Does that mean it wouldn't be powered by an RTG like the last few missions? Or do you just mean that the MSH will have its own comms independent of a supporting rover/lander?

JPL has run the numbers on this as part of the engineering study. The solar panel shown in the concept image (in the center) charges a battery that gives MSH a 10km range or 5 minutes of hover time after charging for a day. It would have its own comms that could reach orbit.

Re: JPL's Plan for the Next Mars Helicopter

#83

Post by BotJunkie »

MichaelZuo wrote: post #66
BotJunkie wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

You can see how the whole thing would fold up in the linked article, there's an image from the white paper that shows MSH fitting into the same size aeroshell Mars Pathfinder used. It would run on solar power and recharge itself, just like Ingenuity.

Re: JPL's Plan for the Next Mars Helicopter

#84

Post by BotJunkie »

snowycat wrote: post #73

That solar panel on the top seems awfully small to me. If you look at the solar panel on the helicopter that's already on mars, its almost 3 times bigger than the body. This just looks tiny in comparison.

It's hard to get a good sense of scale from the image, but the solar panel on the concept is about 0.5m in diameter. JPL has run the numbers as part of their engineering study, and MSH would be able to recharge itself in a day.

Re: JPL's Plan for the Next Mars Helicopter

#85

Post by akiselev »

BotJunkie wrote: post #82
akiselev wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> MSH would be able to communicate with orbit directly and would not need rover or lander support. Does that mean it wouldn't be powered by an RTG like the last few missions? Or do you just mean that the MSH will have its own comms independent of a supporting rover/lander?

JPL has run the numbers on this as part of the engineering study. The solar panel shown in the concept image (in the center) charges a battery that gives MSH a 10km range or 5 minutes of hover time after charging for a day. It would have its own comms that could reach orbit.

Ooof that's hard to swallow :(. Would the MSH be so productive that it makes up for the limited operating time? Is mission planning so meticulous that it would be a bottle neck anyway? What about winter?

Whats the power budget for instruments during/after flight?

Re: JPL's Plan for the Next Mars Helicopter

#86

Post by TaylorAlexander »

trhway wrote: post #67
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.

I’m looking forward to the swarm robotics Starship could enable. If we really get to the point where we are sending thousands of tons of payload to Mars (building a city) then we could have lots of cheap rovers instead of one big one. I designed a 3D printed plastic rover and I’m super curious how it would behave in Mars. An aluminum framed version with injection molded gears would be much more robust while staying low cost. And it can drive over very large obstacles:

https://youtu.be/gqLQ5Ht8YE0

Re: JPL's Plan for the Next Mars Helicopter

#88

Post by aero-glide2 »

ncmncm wrote: post #69

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.)

I disagree, it just shows that NASA was willing to take more risks/ fail-fast approach. "if you aren't failing you're not trying hard enough".

Re: JPL's Plan for the Next Mars Helicopter

#89

Post by BotJunkie »

akiselev wrote: post #85
BotJunkie wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

JPL has run the numbers on this as part of the engineering study. The solar panel shown in the concept image (in the center) charges a battery that gives MSH a 10km range or 5 minutes of hover time after charging for a day. It would have its own comms that could reach orbit.

Ooof that's hard to swallow :(. Would the MSH be so productive that it makes up for the limited operating time? Is mission planning so meticulous that it would be a bottle neck anyway? What about winter? Whats the power budget for instruments during/after flight?

This is all the next step. If they end up putting together an actual mission proposal, they can factor in power budgets for specific science instruments, sun angles and seasonality at the landing site, etc, but they're not quite there yet.

Not sure what you mean by limited operating time, though- if you mean that MSH has to spend 50% of its time charging, that's true, but relative to a rover, it can travel so much farther and faster that JPL is arguing it more than makes up for it.

Re: JPL's Plan for the Next Mars Helicopter

#90

Post by minitoar »

akiselev wrote: post #85
BotJunkie wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

JPL has run the numbers on this as part of the engineering study. The solar panel shown in the concept image (in the center) charges a battery that gives MSH a 10km range or 5 minutes of hover time after charging for a day. It would have its own comms that could reach orbit.

Ooof that's hard to swallow :(. Would the MSH be so productive that it makes up for the limited operating time? Is mission planning so meticulous that it would be a bottle neck anyway? What about winter? Whats the power budget for instruments during/after flight?

For reference the rovers can do 100 meters a day. 10km in one day is huge.
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