What went incorrect? NASA conducts first plane accident probe on one other planet

Engineers from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California and AeroVironment are finishing an in depth evaluation of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter’s remaining flight on Jan. 18, 2024, which will probably be revealed within the subsequent few weeks as a NASA technical report.

Designed as a know-how demonstration to carry out as much as 5 experimental check flights over 30 days, Ingenuity was the primary plane on one other world. It operated for nearly three years, carried out 72 flights, and flew greater than 30 occasions farther than deliberate whereas accumulating over two hours of flight time.

The investigation concludes that the lack of Ingenuity’s navigation system to offer correct information throughout the flight probably prompted a series of occasions that ended the mission. The report’s findings are anticipated to profit future Mars helicopters, in addition to different plane destined to function on different worlds.

Ultimate ascent

Flight 72 was deliberate as a quick vertical hop to evaluate Ingenuity’s flight techniques and {photograph} the realm. Knowledge from the flight reveals Ingenuity climbing to 40 ft (12 meters), hovering, and capturing photographs.

It initiated its descent at 19 seconds, and by 32 seconds the helicopter was again on the floor and had halted communications. The next day, the mission reestablished communications, and pictures that got here down six days after the flight revealed Ingenuity had sustained extreme harm to its rotor blades.

What occurred

“When working an accident investigation from 100 million miles away, you haven’t any black containers or eyewitnesses,” mentioned Ingenuity’s first pilot, Håvard Grip of JPL. “Whereas a number of eventualities are viable with the obtainable information, we’ve got one we imagine is almost certainly: Lack of floor texture gave the navigation system too little info to work with.”

The helicopter’s imaginative and prescient navigation system was designed to trace visible options on the floor utilizing a downward-looking digital camera over well-textured (pebbly) however flat terrain. This restricted monitoring functionality was greater than ample for finishing up Ingenuity’s first 5 flights, however by Flight 72 the helicopter was in a area of Jezero Crater full of steep, comparatively featureless sand ripples.

One of many navigation system’s important necessities was to offer velocity estimates that might allow the helicopter to land inside a small envelope of vertical and horizontal velocities. Knowledge despatched down throughout Flight 72 reveals that, about 20 seconds after takeoff, the navigation system could not discover sufficient floor options to trace.

Images taken after the flight point out the navigation errors created excessive horizontal velocities at landing. Within the almost certainly state of affairs, the onerous affect on the sand ripple’s slope prompted Ingenuity to pitch and roll.

The speedy perspective change resulted in masses on the fast-rotating rotor blades past their design limits, snapping all 4 of them off at their weakest level—a couple of third of the way in which from the tip. The broken blades prompted extreme vibration within the rotor system, ripping the rest of 1 blade from its root and producing an extreme energy demand that resulted in lack of communications.

Down however not out

Though Flight 72 completely grounded Ingenuity, the helicopter nonetheless beams climate and avionics check information to the Perseverance rover about as soon as every week. The climate info may benefit future explorers of the Purple Planet. The avionics information is already proving helpful to engineers engaged on future designs of plane and different autos for the Purple Planet.

“As a result of Ingenuity was designed to be reasonably priced whereas demanding large quantities of pc energy, we turned the primary mission to fly industrial off-the-shelf cellphone processors in deep area,” mentioned Teddy Tzanetos, Ingenuity’s undertaking supervisor.

“We’re now approaching 4 years of steady operations, suggesting that not every part must be greater, heavier, and radiation-hardened to work within the harsh Martian surroundings.”

Impressed by Ingenuity’s longevity, NASA engineers have been testing smaller, lighter avionics that may very well be utilized in automobile designs for the Mars Pattern Return marketing campaign. The info can also be serving to engineers as they analysis what a future Mars helicopter may appear to be—and do.

Throughout a Wednesday, Dec. 11, briefing on the American Geophysical Union’s annual assembly in Washington, Tzanetos shared particulars on the Mars Chopper rotorcraft, an idea that he and different Ingenuity alumni are researching.

As designed, Chopper is roughly 20 occasions heavier than Ingenuity, may fly a number of kilos of science gear, and autonomously discover distant Martian places whereas touring as much as 2 miles (3 kilometers) in a day. (Ingenuity’s longest flight was 2,310 ft, or 704 meters.)

“Ingenuity has given us the arrogance and information to ascertain the way forward for flight at Mars,” mentioned Tzanetos.