WASHINGTON — As the Mars helicopter continues to operate far beyond expectations, lessons from it are being incorporated into NASA’s evolving Mars Sample Return Plan.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced on January 2 that the Ingenuity Mars helicopter has completed 70 flights.th The helicopter flew 260 meters in a 133-second flight and has now covered approximately 17 kilometers since its first flight in April 2021.
Ingenuity participated in the Mars 2020 mission as a technology demonstrator, flying no more than five times. Ingenuity’s success during these flights led NASA to continue flying the helicopter and turn it into a reconnaissance vehicle for the Perseverance rover.
Ingenuity’s success also influenced NASA’s Mars Sample Return (MSR) program. The agency, in collaboration with the European Space Agency, announced in July 2022 that two Ingenuity-based helicopters will be mounted on a future lander to carry samples collected by Perseverance into orbit. These helicopters will serve as a backup in case Perseverance itself is unable to deliver samples to the lander by transporting them from its surface cache to the lander.
JPL engineers are adapting Ingenuity’s design to MSR. Teddy Tsanetos, JPL’s Ingenuity project manager, said at a Dec. 15 event at the National Air and Space Museum that the lessons learned from the Ingenuity flight were “designing a sample recovery helicopter for the next mission.” “That’s the truth we use.” Udvar’s Hazy Center donated his Ingenuity prototype, which NASA used in ground tests, to the museum.
That fundamental truth includes improved modeling of both the helicopter’s aerodynamics and its thermal environment to ensure the helicopter doesn’t get too cold at night, he said. “Mars is very difficult for a spacecraft this small,” he says.
At the same time, NASA continues to review the entire MSR architecture after an independent review concluded that the existing plan will not be ready on schedule and will be much more expensive than previously anticipated. It is unclear what changes will be made to the helicopters currently planned for MSR.
Eric Ianson, NASA’s Mars Exploration Program Director, said in an interview at the event that the effort is “progressing well.” He said work remains on the schedule announced in the fall that called for work on the MSR’s revised architecture to be completed in March, but provided no additional details about the ongoing review. .
NASA announced in November that work on the MSR was being delayed due to architectural reviews as well as budget concerns. The Senate appropriations bill would provide MSR with less than a third of the roughly $950 million requested, but it would fund the program at 2023 levels through early February. Operating under a continuing resolution, NASA wanted to avoid the “worst-case scenario.” If the Senate bill is ultimately passed, there is a risk of a funding shortfall.
Ianson, who is also deputy director of the planetary science division at NASA Headquarters, said these budget concerns are not limited to the MSR. “We’re looking at all the mandates, and we’re paying attention to what the conservative numbers are in the Senate language,” he said, adding, “We’re trying to make sure we don’t put our skis on the wrong foot. “There is,” he said.
Tsanetos said he was pleased to be involved in the development of another helicopter so soon after building Ingenuity. “While working on Ingenuity, we all imagined that our children’s generation or our grandchildren’s generation would build a second version,” he said. “I never imagined that I would be working on the next version of the Mars helicopter while Ingenuity was still flying.”