Mars helicopter 'Ingenuity' piloted by NASA smashes flight expectations

Ingenuity, the 19-inch-tall robotic helicopter on Mars, is not only the first vehicle to make a powered, controlled flight on another planet – it’s continuing to fly, exceeding all expectations by surviving harsh temperatures, dust in the atmosphere, and a two-month communications blackout.

In 54 flights since April 19, 2021, the craft has flown about an hour and a half, covering a distance of about 8 miles in zigzag paths 30 feet or more above the Martian surface.

That's far beyond its primary mission as a technology demonstration of only five flights, totaling less than seven minutes and a distance of about a third of a mile. Flight 55 is being planned.

"It's been a huge surprise for the team," says Joshua Anderson, who leads the team that flies Ingenuity. "This is bonus time, and we're making the most of it."

How has Ingenuity performed so well? USA TODAY spoke with Anderson, Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Operations Lead at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Dave Lavery, NASA Program Executive for Solar System Exploration, to learn more.

How Ingenuity is able to keep flying "is a question we get asked quite a bit," Lavery says. "The helicopter, like the rovers before it, has far outlived its original prime mission definition. It has to do with the way things are engineered for an environment like Mars."

A mission usually ends early when a part fails because it can't handle the environment. But, "if you can get past the checkout period, the first couple of days or weeks, through the environmental extremes, it's generally going to survive for a long time," Lavery says.

"Ingenuity was designed for those first five flights," Anderson says. "A lot of our initial design is based around using commercial parts instead of the aerospace-grade parts you'd use for building spacecraft."

Mars has put Ingenuity "through the wringer, especially all the parts on board," he says.

That's because Mars has a chillingly difficult environment.

What does Ingenuity have to endure?

Extreme temperatures are one hurdle. "At the equator on Mars, at the height of summer, it can get up to about 60 or 65 degrees Fahrenheit," Lavery says. "In the winter, it can drop to minus 150 degrees Fahrenheit."

Thin air is another obstacle. "The atmospheric pressure on Mars is about 1% of atmospheric pressure on Earth at sea level," Lavery says. "To get the equivalent atmospheric pressure on Earth, you'd have to fly (at an altitude) of about 100,000 feet."

That's about 19 miles high. (Commercial airlines usually fly at an altitude between 30,000 and 40,000 feet.)

Ingenuity has two 4-foot carbon fiber blades that rotate at 2,400 times a minute, allowing it to fly in thin air. Its flights on Mars have ranged in altitude from 1 to 59 feet.

Mars, however, has less mass and about 38% surface gravity compared to that of Earth. That means that Ingenuity weighs about 4 pounds on Earth and about 1.5 pounds on Mars.

How do Ingenuity and Perseverance work together on Mars?

The car-sized Perseverance rover carried the helicopter to the Martian surface and deployed it on April 4, 2021. Ingenuity made its first flight 15 days later.

As the rover searches Jezero Crater for chemical traces or other evidence of ancient microbial life in the Martian soil, "Ingenuity can act as a forward scout for Perseverance," Anderson says. That's considered part of the helicopter's operational demonstration.

The vehicles maintain a clear line of sight between one another. Ingenuity's onboard radio communicates with Perseverance, which stores information and transmits it to Earth through satellites orbiting Mars.

"The helicopter radio has a range of about a kilometer (0.6 miles)," Lavery says. Ingenuity controllers try to maintain about half that distance between the two and a clear, unobstructed line of sight between the two.

And while the rover doesn't rely on the helicopter, Ingenuity does depend on Perseverance for flight plans and communication with Earth.

Perseverance is drilling for samples in rock and soil and sealing them in special tubes. A future mission is planned to retrieve the samples and send them to Earth for analysis.

For future missions, the helicopter has demonstrated that "we can fly ahead of where the rover will travel and give it an advance view of the regions it's heading toward," Lavery says.

Since the rover remains focused on its primary mission, "we can send the helicopter in a different direction, where we know the rover is probably not going to go," Lavery says. If the rover is unable to record certain areas or terrains, the helicopter can do it instead.

A 63-day communications blackout

Since landing on Mars, the vehicles have remained in radio contact, except for two blackout periods. The first lasted six days, the second a whopping 63 days.

Neither was unexpected. In the second blackout, "we intentionally flew the helicopter out beyond communications range," Lavery says.

When Ingenuity landed, "there was a small hill between the helicopter and the rover," Lavery says. "So we lost comm between the two. We expected that."

Mission controllers thought the separation would only be a few days. But then "the rover discovered a region that was more scientifically interesting than we originally thought," Lavery says. The rover began taking samples and delayed its journey to the next stop.

"In those situations, the helicopter sort of sits and waits until the rover drives back into range," Lavery says. Communications resumed once the rover cleared the hill.

A new generation of helicopters is being designed for Mars

Ingenuity's success is helping NASA's plans for the next generation of Mars helicopters, vehicles that will be able to retrieve rock and soil samples left by Perseverance on the surface.

Two Sample Recovery helicopters will be sent to Mars for the planned Mars Sample Return. They’ll act as a backup to the Perseverance rover.

The new helicopters will fly to Mars on a future mission, packed along with a lander to return Mars samples in sealed tubes. The Perseverance rover will drive to the lander and deposit the tubes for return to Earth. 

But if Perseverance is unable to complete that task, the new helicopters will have the ability to fly to the samples, land, and pick them up.

"They'll have a small wheel on each leg that will allow limited driving," Lavery says. "They can position themselves to pick up the tubes and fly them to the return craft."

That craft is the Mars Ascent Vehicle, which will fly the samples to Earth.

Another model in the planning stages is the Mars Science Helicopter. This six-rotor version, still in the early conceptual phase, could be used as an aerial scout in future Mars missions, NASA says.

How long will Ingenuity keep flying? We don't know

"Ingenuity has already performed far beyond all of our original expectations," Lavery says. Its ability to survive the harsh Martian winter surprised mission planners, with the result that "we are treating every single additional day as a gift."

"It could cease operating this afternoon, and we just never hear from it or communicate with it again, and the entire project will be an enormous success," he says.

It's impossible to say how long the helicopter could keep going.

"The lifetime of all the components is far beyond what we designed them for," Lavery says. "It's difficult to predict with any sort of accuracy."

"Our intent is to keep it flying for as long as we can," Lavery says. "As long as it's able to fly, it will let us continue to gather information, validate additional technologies, and perform scouting operations for the rover's science team."

SOURCE USA TODAY Network reporting and research; NASA/Jet Propulsion Laboratory; Associated Press