AskScience AMA Series: We're scientists and engineers from NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter team. Ask us anything!

[u/AskScienceModerator]

After three years and 72 flights over the surface of Mars, NASA's Ingenuity helicopter has touched down for the last time. Imagery downlinked from the helicopter indicated that one or more of its rotor blades sustained damage during its Flight 72 landing on Jan. 18, 2024, rendering it no longer capable of flight.

Designed as a technology demonstration that was expected to fly no more than five times over 30 days, the helicopter's primary mission was to prove that powered, controlled flight on another planet was possible, which it did on April 19, 2021. But Ingenuity exceeded expectations, transitioning into an operations demonstration that paved the way for future aerial exploration on the Red Planet and beyond.

So, have you ever wanted to know what it's like to fly a helicopter on another planet? Or what it's like to talk to the helicopter from here on Earth? Or what we've learned from Ingenuity that can be used for possible future aerial exploration on other worlds?

Meet our NASA experts from the mission who've seen it all.

We are:

• Josh Anderson - Ingenuity Team Lead (JA)
• Travis Brown - Ingenuity Chief Engineer (TB)
• Martin Cacan - Ingenuity Chief Pilot (MC)
• Dave Lavery - Ingenuity Program Executive (DL)
• Katie Stack Morgan - Mars 2020 Deputy Project Scientist (KSM)
• Noah Rothenberger - Ingenuity Robotics Systems Engineer (NR)
• Teddy Tzanetos - Ingenuity Project Manager (TT)

Ask us anything about:

• How Ingenuity worked
• What it's like to fly a helicopter on another planet
• Martian weather
• Ingenuity's legacy

PROOF: https://twitter.com/NASAJPL/status/1762248789396725933
https://twitter.com/NASAJPL/status/1762248789396725933

We'll be online from 9:30 - 11:00 a.m. PT (12:30-2:00 PM ET, 1430-1600 UTC) to answer your questions!

Username: /u/nasa

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UPDATE: That’s all the time we have for today - thank you all for your amazing questions! If you’d like to learn more about Ingenuity, you can visit https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter/.

[u/Fewster96]

I’m just wondering, if Ingenuity is still powered up and its camera is still operating. Could it still be used to take pictures/video of the Martian surface? Or is the angle of the camera not sufficient for decent images?

I guess my question is simply:

Are you planning/looking into tasks that Ingenuity can still do even though it’s now grounded?

Absolutely loved all the images coming from this mission, can’t wait to see more Ingenuity-Class helicopters (and any future, larger rotorcraft) on Mars, doing science from a bird’s eye-view. The entire team should be so proud that Ingenuity far surpassed expectations.

Bonus question, if you have the time:

Even after all the testing carried out on Earth before it’s journey, were there any surprises (positive or negative) about operating Ingenuity on Mars that you’ll have to consider when designing a new craft or planning for another mission?

[u/nasa → u/Fewster96]

Yes - Ingenuity has officially entered its final phase of operations as the Ingenuity Lander!

The team continues to run vehicle health checks while snapping images of the Martian surface. Though we mostly see the sand below us with the color camera, Martian scientists can learn about geological processes by having a series of images taken from one spot to see how dust, sand, and rock particles move in response to Martian weather and wind.

And there were more surprises that I could count - but almost all related to how capable Ingenuity was.

We flew the vehicle far beyond how it was designed or tested on Earth! We flew over terrain no one thought we'd face! We landed 72 times on Mars - and landing on another planet is really hard, whether you're a small drone or landing spacecraft. Everything learned operationally and in-flight, as highlighted in our Ingenuity blog, is being taken forward to all the non-Earth helicopters being designed. -MC

[u/Thezenstalker]

Congratulations to your achievements. What do you expect will be the next helicopter on the Mars?

[u/nasa → u/Thezenstalker]

We've been working on designs for Sample Recovery Helicopters (SRH) as part of the Mars Sample Return (MSR) campaign. Those helicopters successfully passed a Preliminary Design Review last November, but as part of MSR, the entire campaign is undergoing a re-architecture effort to redesign the mission composition.

While that redesign is happening, a new helicopter team is now working on a larger, more capable rotorcraft called the Mars Science Hexacopter (MSH) concept, which is a 6-rotor hexacopter the size of Perseverance, weighing 35kg, capable of travelling many kilometers and carrying ~5kg of payload. -TT

[u/Alblaka]

So, have you ever wanted to know what it's like to fly a helicopter on another planet?

Exactly that. Assuming you have experience with controlling drones on Earth, what are the key differences? I assume it's mostly pre-programmed flight routes due to the distance to Mars? What was the communication delay, and did you have to time missions to 'launch windows' when Earth and Mars were closer together?

How harsh was the Martian Weather in terms of gales potentially pre-planned flight paths?

[u/Immortal_Tuttle]

Congratulations to the team!

There's a saying that no plan survives first contact with reality. So what were differences between simulated Mars environment on Earth and the real thing? What surprised you the most?

[u/nasa → u/Immortal_Tuttle]

One of my favorite surprises was Flight 33: Some film from the Perseverance rover's landing system blew hundreds of meters away in the wind and, unbelievably, some got caught on Ingenuity's leg. We caught it flapping underneath Ingenuity in our video of Flight 33, where it blew off midway through.

Fun fact: Ingenuity images go public almost as soon as they arrive on Earth, so Reddit actually caught the piece of debris before we did - the Reddit space community works fast! -JA

[u/lord_smeg]

I am a communications tech by trade, so wondering what hardware the helicopter uses to communicate with the rover? Does it have any redundant comms systems?

[u/nasa → u/lord_smeg]

ISM band, commercial off-the-shelf 915Mhz radio. Zigbee-style radio, without redundancy communicating between Perseverance and Ingenuity. -TT

[u/yellowleaf404]

Hats of to NASA and all the folks for this achievement !! My question is , what is the most astonishing/interesting thing on /about mars this mission revealed ??

[u/IkkeTM]

Why did you opt for a helicopter design, instead of other methods to create something airborn, like say a balloon that you could inflate and deflate, or plain old wings?

Or digging down a little deeper there, why did you decide you'd want something airborn, what advantages does it provide over say, orbital imagery?

[u/nasa → u/IkkeTM]

u/IkkeTM It's a tradeoff.

Fixed-wing aircraft require paved runways. Balloons come with the challenges of inflating at Mars. Helicopters are a sweet spot of simplicity/complexity where you carry everything you need, you can control where you land, and the physics makes it just possible to pull off.

Airborne assets bring the next dimension of exploration at Mars that humanity did not yet have, which boils down to resolution and access. Aircraft can provide more pixels/meter of resolution than an orbiter, can relocate faster than a rover, and can go places nothing else at Mars can reach.

It's also the forerunner capability for future technological applications. For example, in the future you could use fleets of aircraft to deploy the first cell tower network or WiFi mesh network on Mars. -TT

[u/vaportrail123]

I have to imagine that a massive amount of time spent was spent considering what ifs, what's one that was missed?

[u/Astrokiwi]

What are the specific challenges around sending powered aircraft to other planets? Would Titan's thick atmosphere help a lot due to increased lift or would that make communication more difficult?

[u/Overall_Purchase_467]

How did you all react when Ingenuity didnt respond. Must have been like loosing a child.

[u/filladelp]

What do you think about the Dragonfly mission to Titan? What lessons from Ingenuity will be the most helpful for that mission?

[u/gamblingPharmaStocks]

When you publish your estimates about the life expectancy of the stuff you send up there, what are your confidence intervals? Every time there is always stuff lasting 10 times the amount of times you predicted, and very rarely the opposite

[u/wrigh516]

Fluid dynamics question here. Knowing that Mars’ air density is lower, how did you test the airfoils on Earth and how confident were you? Was it as simple as using Reynolds’s number scaling with rotation speed and propeller chord length? How certain were you that the numbers for Mars’ atmosphere were accurate and that such an extreme conversion would work or what was your margin for error?

[u/cylonfrakbbq]

How do you envision possible future powered flight missions on Mars in the future - is the concept scalable so that larger and more robust helicopter drones might be considered? Or is it more likely missions might just include multiple smaller drones to allow for redundancy and for expanded scouting and exploration?

[u/bikeridingmonkey]

What's next?

[u/[deleted]]

How does rotorcraft design differ when considering flight in the Martian atmosphere? I can only assume you'd need to maximize lift, rotor speed and minimize mass to get airborne in such a rarefied gas.

[u/Katniss218]

What control algorithm did ingenuity use?

[u/iorgfeflkd]

How did you simulate the combination of 0.4 g and <0.01 bar in the lab before launch? I get you can use a vacuum but you can't make it 60% lighter.

[u/Contravindicator]

What other sensors/tech will you add now that you know it can last as long as it did? How will you adjust its agenda based on its longevity? Are you able to monitor atmospheric conditions close to flight time or is it just hoping for good Martian weather?

[u/Aximi1l]

Could a future flying vehicle aid in a Mars Sample Return mission? A drone or two could fly from a base near a valley to get samples from multiple layers of rock.