{"id":71303,"date":"2021-03-29T12:56:51","date_gmt":"2021-03-29T16:56:51","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/schillerinstitute.com\/?p=71303"},"modified":"2021-03-29T12:56:53","modified_gmt":"2021-03-29T16:56:53","slug":"nasas-perseverance-rover-prepares-for-humankinds-first-flight-on-mars","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/2.schillermeet.de\/it\/blog\/2021\/03\/29\/nasas-perseverance-rover-prepares-for-humankinds-first-flight-on-mars\/","title":{"rendered":"NASA&#8217;s Perseverance Rover Prepares for Humankind&#8217;s First Flight on Mars"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p class=\"has-medium-font-size wp-block-paragraph\"><strong>NASA, Perseverance Rover Prepare for First Powered Flight of an Aircraft on Another Planet<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">March 28 (EIRNS)\u2014NASA, and its Perseverance rover, are making preparations for the first attempt at the powered, controlled flight of an aircraft on another planet. This would be the 4 pound (1.8-kilogram) Ingenuity rotor craft, which is presently attached to the belly of the Perseverance rover, which touched down on Mars on Feb. 18.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">From the point that Ingenuity is detached from Perseverance and deployed, it will have 30 Martian days, or sols (31 earth days) to conduct its test flight campaign. NASA is setting the test flight campaign at no earlier than April 8, which is less than 2 weeks away.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">A NASA news release, &#8220;NASA Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Prepares for First Flight,&#8221; presents some of the challenging steps ahead:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;Flying in a controlled manner on Mars is far more difficult than flying on Earth. The Red Planet has significant gravity (about one-third that of Earth\u2019s) but its atmosphere is just 1% as dense as Earth\u2019s at the surface. During Martian daytime, the planet\u2019s surface receives only about half the amount of solar energy that reaches Earth during its daytime, and nighttime temperatures can drop as low as minus 130 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 90 degrees Celsius), which can freeze and crack unprotected electrical components.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;To fit within the available accommodations provided by the Perseverance rover, the Ingenuity helicopter must be small. To fly in the Mars environment, it must be lightweight. To survive the frigid Martian nights, it must have enough energy to power internal heaters. The system \u2013 from the performance of its rotors in rarified air to its solar panels, electrical heaters, and other components \u2013 has been tested and retested in the vacuum chambers and test labs of NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">&#8220;\u2019Every step we have taken since this journey began six years ago has been uncharted territory in the history of aircraft,\u2019 said Bob Balaram, Mars Helicopter chief engineer at JPL. \u2018And while getting deployed to the surface will be a big challenge, surviving that first night on Mars alone, without the rover protecting it and keeping it powered, will be an even bigger one.\u2019&#8221;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">At the same time, the Perseverance\u2019s soulmates at Mars, the United Arab Emirates\u2019 Hope satellite will study Mars\u2019 daily and seasonal weather cycles and weather events in the lower atmosphere, as China\u2019s Tianwen 1 satellite will locate a landing site for its rover, which rover will then carry out a mission that includes studying the morphology and structure of Mars, the current and past presence of water, and Mars\u2019 ionosphere. This is a fun and interesting time for science.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>NASA, Perseverance Rover Prepare for First Powered Flight of an Aircraft on Another Planet March 28 (EIRNS)\u2014NASA, and its Perseverance rover, are making preparations for the first attempt at the powered, controlled flight of an aircraft on another planet. This would be the 4 pound (1.8-kilogram) Ingenuity rotor craft, which is presently attached to the [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":37,"featured_media":71304,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[520,505,98],"tags":[842],"class_list":["post-71303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-updates-development","category-updates","category-updates-space","tag-lang-en"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/2.schillermeet.de\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71303","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/2.schillermeet.de\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/2.schillermeet.de\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2.schillermeet.de\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/37"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2.schillermeet.de\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=71303"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/2.schillermeet.de\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71303\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":71314,"href":"https:\/\/2.schillermeet.de\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/71303\/revisions\/71314"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2.schillermeet.de\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/71304"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/2.schillermeet.de\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=71303"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2.schillermeet.de\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=71303"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/2.schillermeet.de\/it\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=71303"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}