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First Flight of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter [video]

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Re: First Flight of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter [video]

#41

Post by walrus01 »

Torkel wrote: post #13

Yay! Cool that they made it :) The video feed had a "university team" feel to it that was sort of unexpected and nice :) I was surprised to see the tack sharp shadow on the image from the downwards facing navigation camera. My thinking was that the rotors needed to spin way faster on this drone than on a drone on earth, because of how thin the atmosphere is on mars. But the sharpness seems to indicate that the rotor…

The Black and white bottom facing camera may have a very short exposure time and a global (not rolling) shutter.

Re: First Flight of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter [video]

#42

Post by Cthulhu_ »

xioxox wrote: post #21

Cool! I wonder why balloons have not been used much on other planets? Is it the weight of the gas? The USSR had the the Vega 1 and 2 balloons on Venus, but presumably further missions could be pretty useful for studying planetary atmospheres, even for gas giants.

I don't think it's viable for Mars; the atmosphere there is only 1% of what the Earth's is, so (amateur armchair maths) to carry the same payload they'd need a balloon 100x as large, plus something to fill it with lighter than the surrounding atmosphere.

Re: First Flight of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter [video]

#43

Post by Cthulhu_ »

pferde wrote: post #25
ur-whale wrote: post #20

Funny how there seems to be neither dust on landing or take-off.

It may have something to do with the fact that Mars' atmosphere is very, very thin (I think they mentioned it's 1% density of Earth's), so there are much fewer particles hitting the ground and pushing the dust, compared to e.g. a small hobby drone taking off here on Earth. I'm sure there was some dust thrown up in the air, but probably not enough to be seen against the background.

Conversely, plenty of dust was blown around during the landing of the rover, but that was mostly from the rocket engines' exhausts.

Re: First Flight of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter [video]

#44

Post by unnouinceput »

ilkkao wrote: post #34

Is it too optimistic to hope that flights will keep the solar panels clean and Ingenuity could follow the rover some months.

Yes. They said that the Mars window is around 40 something days, and their schedule is around ~5, increasing in difficulty, flights. I suspect after that it will be tucked under the rover. But in meanwhile will be more videos so we have something to look for to in near future. History in the making nevertheless.

Re: First Flight of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter [video]

#45

Post by messe »

unnouinceput wrote: post #44
ilkkao wrote: post #34

Is it too optimistic to hope that flights will keep the solar panels clean and Ingenuity could follow the rover some months.

Yes. They said that the Mars window is around 40 something days, and their schedule is around ~5, increasing in difficulty, flights. I suspect after that it will be tucked under the rover. But in meanwhile will be more videos so we have something to look for to in near future. History in the making nevertheless.

> I suspect after that it will be tucked under the rover

There's no mechanism to reattach ingenuity to the rover.

Re: First Flight of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter [video]

#46

Post by Torkel »

eddyg wrote: post #18
Torkel wrote: post #13

Yay! Cool that they made it :) The video feed had a "university team" feel to it that was sort of unexpected and nice :) I was surprised to see the tack sharp shadow on the image from the downwards facing navigation camera. My thinking was that the rotors needed to spin way faster on this drone than on a drone on earth, because of how thin the atmosphere is on mars. But the sharpness seems to indicate that the rotor…

The two rotor blades are just under 4 feet long, and spin in opposite directions at 2,500rpm. The rotor tips are moving at about 2/3 of the speed of sound on Mars. (For ref, Ingenuity weighed 4 pounds on Earth, so about 1.5 pounds in Martian gravity.)

Good data! Nice how martian gravity makes things lighter. If I'm doing the math correctly I get to to be an exposure time of around 0.1-0.5 ms. Fast!, but not unheard of fast :)

Re: First Flight of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter [video]

#50

Post by TekMol »

qwertox wrote: post #31

It made me so sad seeing them cheering and clapping, but not getting up and hugging each other :( So much happiness without the ability to vent it. Such a historical moment.

Funny. When I watched that sequence, I was thinking the opposite. That the length of the clapping and cheering would be "too much" for me. I imagined myself being in that room. I probably would have beed very happy, smiling and showing a "thumbs up" sign or something. But I would not clap or cheer. And I certainly would not want to be hugged by some scientist next to me :)

How do other engineers here on HN feel about it?

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