The Mars Helicopter aims to make the first powered flight on another planet when it takes off on Mars as part of the Mars 2020 mission. I learned a lot getting to visit the drone right before it was mounted on the rover.
How do you fly in 1% of Earth's atmosphere:
Have large rotors (they are 1.2m in diameter) and spin them very fast, around 2500 RPM (5x the speed of a helicopter on Earth).
Plus the aircraft has to be light:
The Mars helicopter weighs in at 1.8kg or around the same as a laptop. Every piece had to be stripped down for weight. Instead of using aerogel for insulation, the craft makes use of CO2 gaps between components. Even aerogel was too heavy!
One of the major challenges is surviving the Martian night:
Temperatures plunge to -80C to -100C so two thirds of the craft's power is actually used to keep its electronics warm. Only one third is used for flying. The estimated flight time is 90 seconds.
The craft can't be driven remotely, it will have to fly autonomously, using its own sensor suite to determine how to fly. The round trip 20 minute delay with Earth means steering the craft from mission control would be impossible.
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Jonny Hyman was a legend in editing, animation, filming, and sound design for this video.
Supersonic Parachute for NASA's Mars 2020 Rover Is Go
Watch as NASA tests a new parachute for landing the Mars 2020 rover on the Red Planet. On Sept. 7, NASA’s ASPIRE project broke a record when its rocket-launched parachute deployed in 4-10ths of a second—the fastest inflation of this size chute in history: go.nasa.gov/2Ro4eAL
The Stunning Images Of Mars: Curiosity Rover
This is the Curiosity rover. Designed initially to explore the crater Gale on Mars as part of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission, Curiosity was launched from Cape Canaveral on November 26, 2011, and landed inside Gale on Mars on August 6, 2012.
The landing site of the car sized-rover was less than 1 ½” miles from its touchdown target after completing a 350 million mile journey. Its goal was to investigate Martian climate and geology and assess if environmental conditions were favorable for microbial life. It would also go on to conduct planetary habitability studies in preparation for human exploration of Mars.
Curiosity's two-year mission was would be extended indefinitely and continues to send back images and data to this day. This is a visual tour of its mission.
Image 2 — This mosaic taken at the rover’s landing site in the Gale Crater was created by using 27 images from its mast-mounted Left Navigation Camera.
Image 3 — Looking at Curiosity's landing site in color reveals the gravelly area surface of the Gale Crater. The terrain falls off into a depression and beyond that is the boulder-strewn, red-brown rim of a moderately-sized impact crater. Farther off in the distance, there are dark dunes and then the layered rock at the base of Mount Sharp.
Image 4 — This image from the Mars Hand Lens Imager camera shows a small bright object on the ground beside the rover. The object is about half an inch long and the rover team believes this object to be debris from the spacecraft, possibly from the events of landing on Mars.
Image 5 — This is the «Shaler» outcrop taken during the 120th day of Curiosity's mission. Its dramatically layering patterns suggested evidence of past streamflow in some locations.
Image 6 — This is a view of the «John Klein» location selected for the first rock drilling by NASA's Mars rover Curiosity taken during the afternoon of the 153rd Martian day of Curiosity's mission. The veins giving rise to evidence of a wet past are common in the flat-lying rocks of the area.
Image 7 — Called the «mini drill test,» Curiosity used its drill to generate this ring of powdered rock for inspection in advance of the rover's first full drilling. Curiosity performed the mini drill test during the 180th Martian day of its mission.
Image 8 — This is Mount Sharp, also known as Aeolis Mons, its a layered mound in the center of Mars' Gale Crater, rising more than 3 miles above the floor of the Gale crater. Lower slopes of Mount Sharp were a major destination for the mission where it searched evidence of a past environment favorable for microbial life.
Image 9 —
This the view of an outcrop called «Point Lake.» The outcrop is about 20 inches high and pockmarked with holes. Curiosity recorded the 20 component images for this mosaic on the mission's 302nd Martian day.
Image 10 —
This scene combines seven images from the telephoto-lens camera onboard Curiosity. The images were taken on the 343rd Martian day of the mission. The rover had driven 205 feet the day before to arrive at the location providing this vista. The center of the scene is toward the southwest. A rise topped by two gray rocks near the center of the scene is informally named «Twin Cairns Island.»
Image 11 — This mosaic of images are from geological members of the Yellowknife Bay formation, and the sites where Curiosity drilled into the lowest-lying member, called Sheepbed, at targets «John Klein» and «Cumberland.» The scene has the Sheepbed mudstone in the foreground and rises up through Gillespie Lake member to the Point Lake outcrop. These rocks record superimposed ancient lake and stream deposits that offered past environmental conditions favorable for microbial life. Rocks here were exposed about 70 million years ago by removal of overlying layers due to erosion by the wind.
Image 12 — This scene combines images taken during the midafternoon of the mission's 526th Martian day. The sand dune in the upper center of the image spans a gap, called «Dingo Gap,» between two short scarps.
Image 13 — This look back at a dune that the Curiosity drove across was taken during the 538th Martian day. The rover had driven over the dune three days earlier.
Image 14 — The scene combines multiple images taken with both cameras of the Mast Camera (Mastcam) on Curiosity during its 1,087th Martian day. Taken at the lower slope of Mount Sharp and Spanning from the east, to the southwest it shows Large-scale crossbedding in the sandstone. This is a feature common in petrified sand dunes even on earth.
Image 15 — Curiosity recorded this view of the sun setting at the close of the mission's 956th Martian day. This was the first sunset from the martian surfaced, observed in color by Curiosity.
NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover Sample Caching System
Watch as NASA-JPL engineers test the Sample Caching System on the Perseverance Mars rover. Described as one of the most complex robotic systems ever built, the Sample and Caching System will collect core samples from the rocky surface of Mars, seal them in tubes and leave them for a future mission to retrieve and bring back to Earth.
The team is on track to launch Perseverance in July 2020 and land in Mars’ Jezero Crater in February 2021. For more information on the Mars 2020 Perseverance mission, please go to: mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/
Credit: NASA-JPL/Caltech
This 11-minute animation depicts key events of NASA's Mars Science Laboratory mission, which will launch in late 2011 and land a rover, Curiosity, on Mars in August 2012. A shorter 4-minute version of this animation, with narration, is also available on our youtube page.
Mars Helicopter Attached to Perseverance Rover for July Launch
With the launch period of NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover opening in 14 weeks, final preparations of the spacecraft continue at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida. In the past week, the assembly, test and launch operations team completed important milestones, fueling the descent stage — also known as the sky crane — and attaching the Mars Helicopter, which will be the first aircraft in history to attempt power-controlled flight on another planet.
STORY — www.americaspace.com/2020/04/14/mars-helicopter-attached-to-perseverance-rover-for-july-launch-to-red-planet/
After the descent stage fueling, the system that will deliver the Mars Helicopter to the surface of the Red Planet was integrated with Perseverance. The helicopter, which weighs 4 pounds (1.8 kilograms) and features propellers 4 feet (1.2 meters) in diameter, is cocooned within the delivery system. In one of the first steps in the day-long process on April 6, technicians and engineers made 34 electrical connections between the rover, the helicopter and its delivery system on the rover's belly. After confirming data and commands could be sent and received, they attached the delivery system to the rover.
Finally, the team confirmed the helicopter could receive an electrical charge from the rover. Before being deployed onto the surface of Jezero Crater, the Mars Helicopter will rely on the rover for power. Afterward, it will generate its own electrical power through a solar panel located above its twin counter-rotating propellers.
The helicopter will remain encapsulated on the rover's belly for the next year and will be deployed around the beginning of May — roughly two-and-a-half months after Perseverance's landing. Once the rover drives about 330 feet (100 meters) away and the helicopter undergoes an extensive systems check, it will execute a flight-test campaign for up to 30 days.
The Perseverance rover is a robotic scientist weighing 2,260 pounds (1,025 kilograms). It will search for signs of past microbial life, characterize the planet's climate and geology, collect samples for future return to Earth and pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet. No matter what day Perseverance launches during its July 17-Aug. 5 launch period, it will land on Mars' Jezero Crater on Feb. 18, 2021.
Credits: NASA
Shake, Rattle and Roll: Testing NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover
NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover lives up to its name by enduring a series of tests to prepare for its journey to the Red Planet. Tests for the mission were performed between September and December of 2019 at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
This video highlights the following tests:
Spin test
Shake test
Mobility deployment test
Rover’s first unassisted stand
Solar test
Thermal vacuum test
Sample caching test
Drive test
The launch period for the Perseverance rover opens July 17, 2020. It will land on Mars February 18, 2021.
For more information on Mars 2020, visit: mars.nasa.gov/mars2020.
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
NASA's Mars 2020 Mission | Everything You Need To Know
NASA’s Mars 2020 Mission & Perseverance Rover
This is Mars as viewed on NASA's awesome web-based portal, Mars Trek.
And this point here is the Jezero Crater, where NASA's Mars 2020 Mission will take place.
The launch window for the mission is between July 17th and August 5th of this year and centers around the Perseverance Rover.
The Perseverance is nearly identical to the Curiosity Rover except for redesigned wheels.
Reusing Curiosity’s design makes sense because Curiosity is an engineering marvel and saves NASA a lot of money in development costs.
Aside from the redesigned wheels, Perseverance also has a unique set of instruments needed for the mission.
The Mars 2020 Mission is just a part of NASA's overarching Mars Exploration Program.
The program has four key science Goals, in which the Perseverance will play a significant role in their achievement.
The first goal is to determine whether life ever existed on the planet, and this is why the Jezero Crater was chosen to be the site.
The crater may have contained a large 800-foot lake connected to rivers.
To help achieve this goal, the Perseverance is equipped with three amazing instruments.
— The Planetary Instrument for X-ray Lithochemistry or PIXL.
— The Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman & Luminescence for Organics & Chemicals or SHERLOC.
— And the SuperCam.
PIXL is an X-ray Spectrometer, which allows Perseverance to detect signs of biofilm made by microbes that may have lived on the planet long ago when the climate was warmer.
At just 10 lbs, it is 50 times lighter than the typical lab spectrometer used for the same purpose.
SHERLOC also has a spectrometer, but it uses an ultraviolet laser to determine the chemical makeup of surfaces.
Last but not least is the SuperCam, which examines rocks and soils with a camera, laser, and spectrometers to seek organic compounds.
It can identify the chemical and mineral makeup of targets as small as a pencil point from a distance of more than 7 meters!
The second goal is to characterize the climate of Mars.
The rover will perform astrobiological investigations using the Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer or MEDA.
MEDA will continuously measure the characteristics of the Martian atmosphere, including the direction and wind speed, temperature, and humidity, and also measures the amount and size of dust particles.
Dust storms can block out the sun for weeks every seven to 10 years, there are enormous dust storms that cover the entire planet.
And the data collected from MEDA will help predict weather conditions that the first astronauts will face and the eventual colonists.
The third goal is to Characterize the Geology of Mars by studying the rock record.
It will do this using the Radar Imager for Mars' Subsurface Experiment or RIMFAX.
RIMFAX uses radar waves to uncover what lies beneath the Martian surface, capable of detecting ice or salty brines.
Additionally, the rover will use its percussive coring drill to collect rock samples and place them in sealed tubes.
The samples will eventually be placed on the planet's surface and possibly be collected on a future mars mission to be returned to Earth for further study.
Learning the Geology of Mars is foundational knowledge that is important for future colonists.
Lastly, the fourth goal of the Mars 2020 mission is to Prepare for Human Exploration.
The Perseverance has four sub-objectives for this goal, but we are going to zero in on the Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment or MOXIE.
MOXIE is an experiment that aims to demonstrate the ability to produce oxygen from the Martian Atmosphere.
This is critical for two apparent reasons as astronauts and colonists need oxygen to breathe and it can be used as propellant for return trips back to Earth.
The MOXIE takes the Mars atmosphere and heats it up to 800 degrees Celsius, which allows the oxygen to be separated from the Carbon dioxide.
If this experiment is successful, NASA may send a dedicated mission to produce Oxygen on Mars, which would lay the groundwork for human missions and a colony.
So, all the instruments on the Perseverance are astonishing in their own right but to top it off, the rover is equipped with a helicopter.
If successful, the idea is for future Mars rover missions to be outfitted with drones that can scan the surrounding area for interesting objects and places for the rover to explore.
NASA has a long succession of successful Mars rover missions going back 23 years.
Hopefully, the Perseverance continues the succession of successful Mars rovers.
And hopefully, through its discoveries and experiments, it paves the way for the human missions to come.
Top 10 Extreme Trucks and Vehicles for Any Off-road Adventure
The majority of our episodes are rather serious and contain information about quality day to day vehicles that our viewers can buy and enjoy for daily driving. But this time we decided to have some fun and present to you a list of the meanest trucks and extreme all-terrain vehicles that exist around the globe.
You might think that they should be driven only in case of a full scale apocalypse on our planet, but be sure that there are some places around the world that require the most brutal vehicles the automotive industry can offer. So sit back and enjoy this amazing lineup that can take you to places where no foot may tread!
Jeep Wrangler-based Rezvani Tank: rezvanimotors.com/rezvani-tank/#rezvani-tank-specifications
Rezvani decided to test their skills in engineering an extreme utility vehicle with a menacing name TANK. This towering SUV is based on a Jeep Wrangler with an updated powertrain, a 6.4 Liter 500-horsepower V8.
ZAROOQ SandRacer 500GT: zarooqmotors.com
After being kept in the dark for more than a year, ZAROOQ SandRacer 500GT is finally ready for production. With only 35 units of this imposing off-road supercar being built, the price has skyrocketed from originally expected $100,000 to $450,000 at a minimum.
Avtoros Shaman: avtoros.info/landings/shaman
This is an 8 by 8 truck suitable for any terrain conditions, engineered and manufactured by the Russian company Avtoros. The installed powertrain consists of a four-cylinder Iveco F1C 3-liter turbo diesel and 6-speed manual transmission.
Toyota Tonka: toyota.com.au/hilux-tonka
Tonka is a brand that has been producing toy trucks, construction machinery and pickups for 70 years and to celebrate their history an interesting collaboration between Tonka and Toyota emerged. The prototype was built on the base of Toyota Hilux.
Ripsaw EV2 by Howe & Howe Technologies: ripsawtank.com
Ripsaw EV2, is an exclusive all-terrain vehicle from Howe & Howe Technologies with the price of $295,000. EV2 is an 8,000 pounds monster that rides on tracks and is powered by a 6,6-Liter turbo-diesel GM Duramax V8 engine.
Rally Fighter by Local Motors: localmotors.com
Rally Fighter is a two-door two-seater endurance car with a 6.2 Liter GM E-Rod V8 Engine that produces 430 hp and 424 pound-feet of torque. This automobile has a very sturdy frame, high clearance and heavy-duty suspension for off-road performance.
Sherp: sherp.ru
Sherp managed to get a solid position among the most capable off-road vehicles in the world. Its greatest advantage is 2 feet clearance, unique chassis and huge wheels without inner tubes, that help in conquering obstacles up to 3.3 feet in height.
Marauder from Paramount Group: paramountgroup.com/capabilities/land/marauder
Marauder is a 4 by 4 mine-protected vehicle that ordinarily civilians can buy after passing a background check and producing a $400,000 check.
DTV Shredder: bpgwerks.com
DTV Shredder – a scooter on tracks or a dual track vehicle, hence DTV, is a rather capable representative of personal off road transportation.
Ziesel: ziesel-adventures.com
Der Ziesel was engineered by the German company Mattro Mobility Revolutions as an all-electric rescue vehicle for sci resorts. From the first look Ziesel creates an impression of being an armchair on steroids.
Ghe-o Rescue: ghe-o.com/rescue---utility.html
The engineers of Ghe-o Rescue had an idea of creating a vehicle that could cope with any extreme situations and as a result save human lives.