NASA's bold plan to fly a helicopter on Mars in 2021

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On February 18, 2021, the Perseverance rover will reach Mars. The rover is not alone. It is carrying the Mars Helicopter Ingenuity. The 1.8 kg helicopter is a technology demonstration of aerial missions on Mars. Flying on the red planet won't be an easy task because it has a rocky terrain that can cause trouble while landing. Another important challenge is the thin atmosphere of Mars.

In general, a helicopter on earth is accompanied by a set of spinning wings called blades or rotors on its top. As the blades spin, they create a force that allows the helicopter to push the air below it and then rise high into the sky. However, the atmosphere on Mars is quite different from ours.

The air surrounding the Red Planet is just 1 percent the density of the Earth’s atmosphere. Now with so little air to move around, achieving lift on Mars will indeed be a challenging task. Although Mars' gravity is just 38% of Earth's gravity, it will somehow assist the chopper during its flight. Even with that assistance, we won't be able to fly a vehicle on Mars by using the same technologies, that we use to fly a helicopter on our planet.

To overcome the atmosphere related issues, the engineering team had come up with a unique structural design for the chopper. Since the atmosphere on Mars is fragile, to achieve lift-off, the chopper has to push a lot of air downwards, and the only way to do this is to make the helicopter's blades spin as fast as possible. Typically, a helicopter on Earth has its blades spinning at about 500 rpm, but Ingenuity is designed in a way to make its blades reach a spinning speed of about 2,300 to 2,500 rpm. That's about 5 times faster than a typical helicopter on Earth.

Because of the 20-minute delay of signals, the helicopter cannot be controlled from Earth. Ingenuity has been installed with some autonomy sensors, including gyros, accelerometers, cameras, altimeters, and inclinometers, which will guide it in making smart decisions throughout its Mars voyage, thereby assisting Ingenuity to fly autonomously on a lonely world.

The helicopter Ingenuity is a high-risk project, and if it turns out to be successful, it will guide us to take up advanced aerial projects on the red planet. In the future, helicopters on Mars missions could act as robotic scouts, that won't only view the terrain from above that rovers cannot access, but would also serve as spacecraft carrying scientific instruments. They might even be able to help future astronauts someday to explore the red planet.