Tag: Mars 2020

April 19th saw aviation and space flight history made 288 million kilometres from Earth, when a tiny drone-like craft weighing just 1.8 kg spun-up two contra-rotating rotor blades, each 1.2 metres in diameter, to 2,500 rpm and then rose into the tenuous atmosphere of Mars to a height of 3 metres, hovered rotated about its vertical axis, then descended to land on the Martian surface once more.

Ingenuity, a proof-of-concept system to test the feasibility of controlled, powered flight on Mars, is a remarkable little vehicle that holds great promise for the future of the exploration of that world. While this initial flight was short – under a minute in total length from spinning-up its rotors to touch-down, it opens the door to more extensive flights over the coming days that will see the vehicle complete more complex manoeuvres. In doing so, it will provide vital information on the behaviour of rotary vehicles on Mars, vehicles that could in the future provide enormous additional potential and capabilities to future robotic missions on Mars and eventually support human missions.

The flight occurred at 07:31 UTC on Monday, April 19th, with telemetry being recorded by the helicopter’s own systems and relayed to the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover, which also recorded the event using its Mastcam-Z camera system and its navigation cameras. The initial data from the flight was then transmitted to Earth some three hours later, with additional images and video being transmitted throughout the day.

The first indication of the success of the flight came not through any pictures but via a simple graphic track of altimeter readings made by Ingenuity. Mostly flat to show the vehicle was sitting on the ground, the track was marked by a sudden “bump” recording the vehicle rise to just over 3 metres, its hover, and then its descent. It was enough to get the helicopter’s flight team – a handful at JPL practising social distancing in a large room, the rest working from home – rejoicing. But the chart was just the opening treat.

Following the initial receipt of data, still images in low-resolution captured by Perseverance’s navigation cameras clearly showed the helicopter “jumping” between to close-together points, indicating that during the period between the images, it had flown and landed. However the biggest treat came later in the day with a stream of frames captured by the Mastcam-Z system on the rover.  When strung together, these produced a video of the flight.

Ingenuity is a project more than six years in the making, and has uniquely involved not only multiple NASA space and science centres, but also their aviation research and development centres as well. It was actually a late addition to the Mars 2020 mission, requiring some extensive changes to the rover that had to be made in order to mount the helicopter beneath the rover’s belly, and include a mechanism for deploying Ingenuity onto the surface of Mars.

Ahead of the Mars 2020 launch, Ingenuity want through extensive testing to simulate flight conditions on Mars. This involved placing the vehicle a large vacuum chamber filled with carbon dioxide to a pressure to match the surface atmospheric pressure on Mars – which is the equivalent of Earth’s at an altitude of 30 km. To simulate the low Martian gravity (38% that of Earth’s), a special rig was attached to the demonstrator to counter 62% of its mass. Finally, a wall of 900 computer fans was used to simulate typical surface wind speeds on the surface of Mars, as recorded by the Mars Science Laboratory rover Curiosity.

 All of this allowed engineers to define the optimal size of the helicopter’s rotors, balancing them against Ingenuity’s mass and size and to determine things like their required rate of spin to achieve flight – between 2,400 and 2,500 rpm  – five times the speed of Earth-based helicopter rotors.

Even so, flying an engineering test model in a controlled environment is very different to doing the same on Mars – hence a lot was riding on this first flight.

Ahead of it, the area selected for the test flight sequence and previously dubbed “the airfield” was unofficially renamed “Wright Brothers Field”. Having safely dropped off the helicopter there in early April, Perseverance had driven some 70 metres from Ingenuity at a rise overlooking the area that NASA has dubbed “Van Zyl Overlook” in honour of key Ingenuity team member Jakob van Zyl, who passed away unexpectedly in August 2020. From this vantage point it is hoped that the rover will be able to record all of Ingenuity’s flights.

Prior to the flight, and as noted in my previous Space Sunday update, the flight team had to make some changes to the software overseeing Ingenuity’s first flight. Not only have these adjustments worked well, it is hoped that they will remove any need for running a complete software re-installation on the vehicle – a process that could take several days to complete and severely impact the ability to complete all of the remaining four planned test flights. However, the option of a full re-installation is being kept open should further issues arise with the timing and control processes.

Inn the meantime, it’s going to be a few days before all of the data from the first flight has been analysed. As such, the next flight for Ingenuity has yet to be scheduled.

When it does goes ahead, it should see the helicopter rise to an altitude of around 5 metres, then translate into horizontal flight for a distance of some 50 metres before coming to a stop, then returning once more to land.

As it is, the initial telemetry from Ingenuity shows it is a good health – better, in fact than before it lifted off. This is because the flight removed dust that had been accumulating on the solar cells located above the vehicle’s rotors, interfering with their efficiency.

In all the Mars Helicopter project has three goals:

• Show via Earth-based testing that it should be possible for a heavier-than-air vehicle  to take flight on Mars – achieve via the vacuum tests described above.
• Achieve stable flight on Mars – now achieved through this first flight.
• Obtain data that can inform engineers as to the design and capabilities required by future aerial vehicles that could be deployed to Mars – and also elsewhere in the solar system, such as Saturn’s moon Titan.

Continue reading “Mars Monday: Ingenuity flies” →

NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover has passed its first month on Mars, an event marked by the science and engineering teams continuing to check out the rover’s systems  and instruments as the rover continues its initial drive within Jezero Crater.

So far, all of this has been going exceedingly well. We’ve had no major technical issues. We’ve had no major technical issues.

– Ken Farley, Perseverance project scientist

Currently, the mission team are preparing to deploy the Ingenuity drone helicopter ahead of for a series of proof-of-concept flights. This has involved driving the rover short distances to locate a suitable area in which to deployed the helicopter, which is stored under the rover.

So a location was found during the past week, and on Sunday, March 21st, Sol 30 for the rover on Mars, the command was sent to eject the cover that projected the delicate helicopter during the rover’s arrival on Mars. The release of the cover was filmed by the WATSON imager on the rover’s robot arm, with raw colour and black and white images issued by NASA a few hours after the cover had been dropped.

The next stage will be for the rover to move clear of the cover so the helicopter itself can be deployed, before the rover backs away even further to expose the drone to clear air. It’s not clear when this deployment will take place, but NASA will be holding a special briefing on Tuesday, March 23rd at 17:30 UTC at which members of the helicopter and rover team will discuss progress with the mission and what will be involved in the helicopter deployed and flight operations  commence. The briefing will by available on NASA TV and YouTube, with questions being accepted via social media using #MarsHelicopter.

The first flight won’t be made any earlier than the first week of April, but it will be filmed by the rover using its high-resolution Mastcam-Z systems, and an attempt will be made to record the sound of the drone flying. In all, five flights of the helicopter are anticipated, after which Perseverance will commence its own science mission.

As things stand, this will be a two-phase mission, the first being an exploration of the inflow delta created by the water that once flowed into the crater to form a lake. In particular, the rover will be looking for evidence of past life in the sediments and rocks. Along the way, it sell select a spot to deposit up to 10 samples it has gathered during its studies, which my be collected by a future sample-return mission.

The second phase will see Perseverance may its way out of the crater to examine the crater rim and the plains beyond. Here again, it will select a location to deposit up to 28 samples that may be gathered by a future sample-return mission.In all, both phases of the mission – which will be subject to change depending on discoveries made along the way – are expected to take around 7 years to complete and will see the rover cover some 35 km.

In the meantime, the rover’s microphones have been busy; as I reported in  my last Space Sunday, one has recorded the sound of the Martian wind. More recently, NASA has released a recording on the rover’s EDL (Entry, Descent. Landing) microphone capture of sounds of the rover driving on Mars.

Those expecting some high-tech sound of purring electrical motors and so on as depicted in sci-fi films are liable to be disappointed by the strange mix of bangs,clunks and thuds recorded as the rover’s aluminium wheels and its spring suspension deal with the uneven terrain. Two recordings were released, one at 16 minutes in length, and a 90-second “cleaned up” recording, that is embedded below.

If I heard these sounds driving my car, I’d pull over and call for a tow. But if you take a minute to consider what you’re hearing and where it was recorded, it makes perfect sense.

– Dave Gruel, lead engineer for Mars 2020’s EDL Camera and Microphone subsystem.

One of the reasons the sounds seem to be odd is because the EDL microphone isn’t designed to record the the sound of the mobility system directly, rather it is picking the sounds up through the body of the rover.

Glynn Lunney

Glynn Stephen Lunney may not be a name familiar to many interested in human space flight, but he was one of the legends of NASA, and who sadly passed away at the age of 84 on March 19th, 2021.

Born in November 1936 in the coal city of Old Forge, Pennsylvania, Lunney was encouraged by his parents to seek a career away from the mines. An early interest in flight and model aeroplanes led him to engineering in college, form where he enrolled at the Lewis Research Centre in Cleveland, Ohio, to study aerospace engineering, the centre at that time forming part of the US  National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics.

Graduating in 1958 with a Bachelor of Science degree, Lunney remained with the NACA as a researcher in aerospace dynamics at Lewis. He was thus one of NASA’s very first employees when on July 29th, 1958 President Eisenhower signed it into existence, subsuming the NACA into it in the process.

Lunney’s prowess in the fledgling field of space flight was immediately recognised, and he was transferred to Langley Research Centre, Virginia, where in September 1959, and aged just 21, he became the youngest member of the Space Task Group, the body given responsibility for the creation of NASA’s human space flight programme.

As a member of the Flight Operations Division, Lunney was one of the engineers responsible for planning and creating procedures for Project Mercury, America’s first manned space programme. Here he was a major part of the team that wrote the first set of mission rules by which both flight controllers and astronauts operated, and he also became the second man to serve as the Flight Dynamics Officer (FIDO), responsible for controlling the trajectory of the Mercury spacecraft and planning adjustments to it.

Such was Lunney’s quiet assurance, professionalism and engineering skill, he was one of three men selected by Christopher C. Kraft, the hands-on head of mission operations, to join him in becoming the first generation of Flight Directors responsible for managing all of NASA’s space flights, the other two being John Hodge and the legendary Gene Kranz. Together, these for men did much to establish the protocol  and procedures required for human space flight at that time, and they also oversaw the design and implementation of the first two Mission Operations Control Rooms which were to become famous as “mission control” in the Apollo era.

Although only 29 when selected by Kraft, Lunney was, in addition to his responsibilities as a Flight Director, charged with overseeing the testing of core elements of Apollo flight hardware, including the launch escape system, and the first uncrewed flight test of the the Saturn V launch vehicle.

Lunney was particularly respected for his ability to absorb and retain information, running through scenarios and options much faster than any of his colleagues. This was especially important in the wake of the Apollo 13 explosion in  1970, with the vehicle en-route to the Moon.

While Genz Kranz and his White flight team tend to get all of the credit for successfully guiding the astronauts through the crisis and getting them back to Earth, it was actually Lunney who orchestrated the entire process of powering-up the lunar module, transferring the flight guidance and navigation data to its computer and  getting the Apollo 13 crew and critical equipment into the module within a very short time frame, whilst also leaving the command module in a condition whereby it could hopefully be powered up later. In doing so, he largely steered his team by using his own innate knowledge of systems aboard both craft.

Continue reading “Space Sunday: more from Mars and recalling a NASA legend” →

NASA is continuing to get the Mars 2020 rover Perseverance ready to commence science operations, with the past week has seen a number of milestones achieved – including the rover’s first drive on the surface of Mars.

Immediately following the post-landing check-outs, mission controllers were focused on swapping out the Entry Descent and Landing (EDL) software on the rover for the software that will be central to its surface operations. This work was completed on Friday, February 26th – Sol 8 on Mars for the rover. This paved the way for this week’s check-outs of systems.

On Sunday, February 28th, commands were sent to deploy the Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyser (MEDA). Located on the rover’s mast, this comprises two extensible booms and forms the rover’s “weather station”, a set of sensors that measure temperature, wind speed and direction, pressure, relative humidity, radiation, and dust particle size and shape, provided by Spain’s Centro de Astrobiología.

Following this, on Tuesday, March 12th (Sol 12 for the rover), the robot arm was put through its initial paces.

As with Curiosity, the robot arm on Perseverance forms a key part of its science and physical capabilities. At over two metres in length, it has 5 degrees freedom of movement, and ends with a 45 kg “turret” that carries numerous tools and instruments, including:

• The Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals (SHERLOC), an ultraviolet Raman spectrometer that uses fine-scale imaging and an ultraviolet (UV) laser to determine fine-scale mineralogy and detect organic compounds.
• WATSON (Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering) – a camera designed to perform a wide range of roles, from working in combination with SHERLOC, to providing the ability to check around and under the rover for engineering purposes.
• The Planetary Instrument for X-Ray Lithochemistry (PIXL), an X-ray fluorescence spectrometer designed to investigate the elemental composition of Martian surface materials.
• The rover’s drill and sample gathering system.

For its first use, the arm was extended from its cradle and raised to the vertical before being “wriggled” back and forth to confirm instrument stability. It was then lowered and put through a set of rotational moves (as was the instrument turret), before being returned to its cradle and the turret again rotated in two directions.

Tuesday’s first test of the robotic arm was a big moment for us. That’s the main tool the science team will use to do close-up examination of the geologic features of Jezero Crater, and then we’ll drill and sample the ones they find the most interesting. When we got confirmation of the robotic arm flexing its muscles, including images of it working beautifully after its long trip to Mars – well, it made my day.

– Robert Hogg, Mars 2020 rover deputy mission manager

A further significant milestone was marked on March 4th (Sol 14), when the rover made that first drive. While covering less then eight metres, it was enough for the rover to perform a few basic manoeuvres intended to allow the engineering team to check-out the rover’s basic mobility capabilities.

Following a set of initial steering turns of the forward wheels (shown above), the rover drove forward 4 metres before turning 150^o whilst standing still. It then reversed a further 2.5 metres to park in a new location. While comparatively short and taking 33 minutes to complete, this first drive is a small taste of what is to come. With its improved navigation and auto-pilot capabilities, Perseverance is  capable of covering up to 200 metres in a single day once surface operations commence.

This was our first chance to ‘kick the tires’ and take Perseverance out for a spin. The rover’s six-wheel drive responded superbly. We are now confident our drive system is good to go, capable of taking us wherever the science leads us over the next two years.

– Anais Zarifian, Mars 2020 rover mobility test bed engineer

The new parking position gave the mission team an opportunity to look back at the rover’s landing point and examine the surface and how the skycrane motors dispersed dust and regolith. The view also gave the mission team the opportunity to formally name the landing site, as has been done with past missions.

Using a press conference on the rover’s  progress held on Friday, March 5th, members of the Mars 2020 mission team announced the landing site will be known as the “Octavia E. Butler Landing”, named in honour of the African-American science fiction writer, who passed away in 2006.

Whilst not officially recognised by the International Astronomical Union, the body responsible for all official solar system designations, the name reflects the Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s practice of naming key sites for missions after noted scientists and science fiction writers (for example, the Curiosity rover landing site was dubbed “Bradbury Landing” after science fiction author Ray Bradbury, while the mountain it is exploring was dubbed “Mount Sharp” after American geologist Robert P. Sharp).

Depending on how reporting on the initial phases of the rover’s mission is handled by NASA, I’ll continue to update on Perseverance alongside other Mars missions either as a part of Space Sunday, or within a new series I’m debating running. In the meantime, the video below combines views of Jezero Crater captured by the rover’s Mastcam and NavCam systems during the rover’s first week of operations.

Continue reading “Space Sunday: Perseverance, SN10, and a little bit more” →

On Thursday, February 18th, NASA’s Mars 2020 mission delivered the rover Perseverance, carrying the helicopter drone Ingenuity, safely to the surface of Jezero Crater, Mars (see: Space Sunday: ‘Perseverance will get you anywhere’). Sine then, the rover has been going through its initial checks, and on Monday, February 22nd, members of the mission team gave the latest update on the rover’s status, which included a unique video and an audio recording.

The video was made up of images recorded by a suite of cameras specifically mounted on the rover and its landing systems specifically with the aim of recording the landing event in as much detail as possible. These cameras comprised:

• A pair of camera on the top of the aeroshell that protected the rover and its “skycrane” descent stage through entry into, and initially deceleration and flight through, the upper atmosphere of Mars. These were intended to capture video of the supersonic parachute deployment.
• A single camera attached to the skycrane that looked down on to the stowed rover, designed to record the process of winching it down in its harness and then delivering it to the ground.
• A camera up the upper deck of the rover looking up at the skycrane to record the same, and the skycrane’s departure from the landing site.
• A camera on the side of the rover and looking down, intended to record the vehicle’s descent via parachute and its approach for landing.

With the exception of one of the aeroshell cameras, which appears to have failed when the explosive “mortar” fired the parachute package clear of the aeroshell, all of these camera captured some incredible footage of the landing sequence.

Once retuned to Earth, the footage was poured over by the mission’s imaging team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), with elements combined with audio recorded at JPL’s mission control during the landing, to produce an incredible short film, that puts the audience right there with the rover as it landed on Mars, as you can see below.

The first part of the film showed the deployment of the parachute system. This comprised firing the 67 Kg parachute pack out of the top of the aeroshell at 150 km/h, detaching a protective cover from the aeroshell (parts of which broke off) in the process.

The package pulled the parachute harness out behind it until it reached its full extent (about 46 metres), which caused the 21.5m diameter parachute to deploy at a time when the vehicle was still travelling at around Mach 1.75. In all, this process took around 1.5 seconds to complete.

At this point the the rover down-look camera started recording, capturing the jettisoning of the heat shield that formed the lower part of the aeroshell. This demonstrated its aerodynamic nature by falling away without tumbling, leaving the rover’s look-down camera to film the inflow delta to one side of the crater  – and the intended landing point –  as the rover and aeroshell swayed under the parachute.

Not long after this, the rover and its skycrane descent stage dropped clear of the aeroshell, the view of the ground shifting dramatically as the descent stage used its motors to  propel itself away from the areoshell to avoid any risk of collision before gently veering back to centre itself over the landing zone.

This footage – still via the rover’s down-look camera – then captures the thrust from the rocket motors as the skycrane comes to a hover some 20 metres above the ground, then there is a sharp jerk as the rover is released to be lowered to the ground by the skycrane and its harness.

As the rover is released by the descent stage, so the remaining camera systems come into play, one looking down from the skycrane as the rovers is lowered, and the other on the rover looking up as it leaves the skycrane as it hovers steadily over the landing zone.

It was also this up-look camera that caught the last images of the skycrane as, with the rover on the ground, the harness cables and data umbilical detached, it re-oriented itself to fly away to crash some 700m from the rover.

As well as cameras to record the images of the landing, it had been hoped that one of the rover’s two microphones would record the sounds of the descent and landing. Unfortunately, it failed to do so, but over the weekend, it did capture the sigh of a gust of wind passing over the rover at about 5 metres/second, giving us our first direct recording of the Martian wind.

Since landing, various checks have been performed on the vehicle, and instrument packs deployed. The most important of these has been the RSM – the Remote Sensing Mast. This houses a range of instruments, including the SuperCam, the Mastcam-Z high-resolution camera and the rover’s main navigation cameras (NavCams). The latter are, like their cousins on Curiosity’s RSM, designed to assist with rover driving and navigation. However, they are far more capable and much higher resolution, each one capable of take up to a 20 megapixel image.

For their initial testing, there were operated at one-quarter of this capacity, taking a series of images around the rover, which were shown at the February 22nd press conference without any colour processing or white-balancing, so they showed Mars exactly as it were appear to a human standing there.

Over the next few days, the remaining systems on the RSM will be tested, and the rover will also go into a data download mode.

Since launch, the on-board computers have been configured with software required to keep the rover safe during Mars transit and to allow it to play its part in the EDL phase of the mission.  As this programming is no longer required, mission control will transmit the initial data sets required for the rover and its systems to go through their commissioning procedures – which are liable to take a few weeks – and prepared it for its initial science mission software. During this week, further tests will also be carried out, including allowing the rover to complete a short drive.

I’ll have more on all of these actives in future Space Sunday updates, but for now, why not scroll back up and what that video again?