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About To Invade Mars Again

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SKORPI0 said:
www.inverse.com

There's now a helicopter on Mars

NASA's Perseverance rover landed on Mars along with the Ingenuity helicopter, which is set to make the first test flight on another planet.
www.inverse.com www.inverse.com
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The team behind Ingenuity are not yet sure whether it is even possible for a helicopter to hover above the Martian surface. Mars' atmosphere is less than one percent the density of Earth’s, so it may be too thin for the helicopter to successfully fly.

They couldn't replicate that here? Why would they even send it if they didn't know the answer?
 
olds said:
The team behind Ingenuity are not yet sure whether it is even possible for a helicopter to hover above the Martian surface. Mars' atmosphere is less than one percent the density of Earth’s, so it may be too thin for the helicopter to successfully fly.

They couldn't replicate that here? Why would they even send it if they didn't know the answer?
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Helicopters can't really fly on earth either.
 
olds said:
The team behind Ingenuity are not yet sure whether it is even possible for a helicopter to hover above the Martian surface. Mars' atmosphere is less than one percent the density of Earth’s, so it may be too thin for the helicopter to successfully fly.

They couldn't replicate that here? Why would they even send it if they didn't know the answer?
Click to expand...

How could they replicate the various conditions...the difference in gravity, atmospheric density, temperature, Matt Damon trying to shoot it down...
 
I guess it's just a proof-of-concept. Still pretty cool though.
The Mars Helicopter, Ingenuity, is a technology demonstration to test powered flight on another world for the first time. It is hitching a ride on the Perseverance rover. A series of flight tests will be performed over a 30-Martian-day experimental window that will begin sometime in the spring of 2021. For the very first flight, the helicopter will take off a few feet from the ground, hover in the air for about 20 to 30 seconds, and land. That will be a major milestone: the very first powered flight in the extremely thin atmosphere of Mars! After that, the team will attempt additional experimental flights of incrementally farther distance and greater altitude. After the helicopter completes its technology demonstration, Perseverance will continue its scientific mission.
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https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter/
 
BoomerD said:
How could they replicate the various conditions...the difference in gravity, atmospheric density, temperature, Matt Damon trying to shoot it down...
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It's 19" tall. Fly it in a vacuum chamber in a vomit comet. Or something similar.
 
The other thing that is cool, it that Percy is supposed to take (coring?) samples that will be brought back to Earth. Now, that's something.
 
olds said:
It's 19" tall. Fly it in a vacuum chamber in a vomit comet. Or something similar.
Click to expand...
They tested it in a vacuum chamber with a pully at the top and a weighted string attached to the little chopper.
There is a video on youtube showing the development.
 
BoomerD said:
How are they going to protect that thing during storms? Seems like the winds would just blow it away.
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With 1% of the atmospheric density of earth, I wouldn’t expect even very fast winds to have a whole lot of force behind them
 
Greenman said:
Seems like you'd be hard pressed to tell if you were standing in a tornado.
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I was doing some reading about it ... apparently winds need to be 35+ mph to even kick up dust, and they don’t really get much faster than 60. There are planet wide dust storms roughly one in three years though that block most surface sunlight for weeks or months, but apparently don’t feel like a violent storm ... just that all of a sudden the air is dusty.
 
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