It is unintuitive. There's a video [1] demonstrating just how difficult it is to get moving air to do any work when you have as little air to work with as you would on Mars.
What's the utility of doing this besides being cool? It is very cool, but given the weight restrictions, I'm not sure there's any clear use case for this tech besides camera drones. The article implies the aerial pictures are a secondary goal.
This particular mission is a technology proving mission, future missions will use it for forward scouting type stuff, use the copter to find best courses forward, heavier ground probe with all the experiments can take a path with the advantage of foresight. At least that's my understanding.
Rovers are unfortunately very slow, meaning they cannot cover much area, and cannot measure from very many areas simultaneously. Helicopters fill that gap. I think this paper might cover some of the motivation: https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/abs/10.2514/6.2018-0023
Well, they've tested it in mars equivalent atmosphere and gravity (through the clever use of pulleys) soooo, hasn't he? he didn't bet you couldn't fly a helicopter on /mars/, just it's atmosphere.
Yes. Why did I get a flashback to the rushed Challenger mission disaster. If they'd waited till the weather was more suitable, it wouldn't have happened.
The title implies they're behind schedule and need to rush more than expect. Is that the case, or is it simply stating there's a hard deadline by natural forces?
I'm not on the team, but this is the first I've heard of any unexpected or abnormal rush. Schedules are always a little tight, especially with a pandemic on.
The rover is basically a brand new self-driving tank with a helicopter launcher and a robotic arm with a swiss-army-science tool and a laser cannon. That's a lot of stuff to get working properly and packed into a rocket. Oh, it has to land like the Falcon 9 as well, except hovering and lowering itself on a tether, like the Air Cav for Mars.
Because Mars and Earth takes different amounts of time to complete an orbit around the Sun, launching at the right point in time is absolutely essential to ensure that your transfer orbit takes you to the distance of Mars' orbit at the exact point in time that Mars will happen to be there. You can mess around with your transfer orbit parameters to give you a bit of leeway, but ultimately limits on available delta V and on maximum relative velocity on encounter limit the window of time that you have to launch your mission.
See https://trajbrowser.arc.nasa.gov.
They have until mid August to launch the mission[0]. If not, the additional cost of keeping personnel employed and hardware maintained for the next 2 years or so while waiting for Earth and Mars to return to the same relative positions can easily cost $150m, if the InSight mission delay is any guide. [1]
Well, yes, NASA does rely a lot on external contractors due to the budgetary flexibility it entails. While there is some cross-communication between teams, it's generally limited by the extreme degree of specialisation needed. Also, as a general rule almost all of the hardware for any given mission is custom built for that mission, so the necessary knowhow to operate it is both unique and irreplaceable.
That said, some of the extra cost is due to scope creep, or due to changes in launch vehicle availability requiring the mission to be redesigned.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 72.5 ms ] threadEspecially considering one needs power which is not magical. In X-plane one can equip the plane with magical jets, but in real life?
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYe3sIaNHVs ("How Strong is The Wind on Mars?" by Cody'sLab)
Derek from Veritasium did a nice little story on it last summer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhsZUZmJvaM
https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter/
Perhaps they can use the data from this mars copter to improve the odds of success with Dragonfly.
The rover is basically a brand new self-driving tank with a helicopter launcher and a robotic arm with a swiss-army-science tool and a laser cannon. That's a lot of stuff to get working properly and packed into a rocket. Oh, it has to land like the Falcon 9 as well, except hovering and lowering itself on a tether, like the Air Cav for Mars.
Here's a video that blows my mind every time I watch it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2I8AoB1xgU
Such a complicated landing sequence, and needs to work correctly the first time, all autonomously. And it worked!
They have until mid August to launch the mission[0]. If not, the additional cost of keeping personnel employed and hardware maintained for the next 2 years or so while waiting for Earth and Mars to return to the same relative positions can easily cost $150m, if the InSight mission delay is any guide. [1]
[0] https://spacenews.com/mars-2020-launch-slips-three-days/ [1] https://spacenews.com/insight-delay-adds-150-million-to-miss...
That said, some of the extra cost is due to scope creep, or due to changes in launch vehicle availability requiring the mission to be redesigned.