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NASA rushing to complete Mars launch before planet moves out of range
- jacobush 6y agoI still find it perplexing that one can fly a helicopter, or anything really, in such a thin atmosphere. Especially considering one needs power which is not magical. In X-plane one can equip the plane with magical jets, but in real life?
- msl 6y agoIt is unintuitive. There's a video [1] demonstrating just how difficult it is to get moving air to do any work when you have as little air to work with as you would on Mars. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYe3sIaNHVs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aYe3sIaNHVs ("How Strong is The Wind on Mars?" by Cody'sLab)
- jcims 6y agoTotally agree. It's obviously a high risk portion of the mission but I'm glad someone had the guts to propose it. Derek from Veritasium did a nice little story on it last summer - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhsZUZmJvaM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhsZUZmJvaM
- klmadfejno 6y agoWhat's the utility of doing this besides being cool? It is very cool, but given the weight restrictions, I'm not sure there's any clear use case for this tech besides camera drones. The article implies the aerial pictures are a secondary goal.
- wolfram74 6y agoThis particular mission is a technology proving mission, future missions will use it for forward scouting type stuff, use the copter to find best courses forward, heavier ground probe with all the experiments can take a path with the advantage of foresight. At least that's my understanding.
- jvanderbot 6y agoRovers are unfortunately very slow, meaning they cannot cover much area, and cannot measure from very many areas simultaneously. Helicopters fill that gap. I think this paper might cover some of the motivation: https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/abs/10.2514/6.2018-0023 https://arc.aiaa.org/doi/abs/10.2514/6.2018-0023
- ceejayoz 6y ago"There's something neat we'd like to look at, but we can't get the rover up there" seems like a likely answer.
- _Microft 6y agoIt's a technology demonstration. https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter/ https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter/
- TinkersW 6y agoThere is a future mission planned to Titan called Dragonfly, it will send a rotorcraft to the surface. Perhaps they can use the data from this mars copter to improve the odds of success with Dragonfly.
- spiritplumber 6y agoI'm so glad I lost that "You can't fly a helicopter in Mars atmosphere" bet.
- Prey4Jesus 6y agoYou haven’t lost it yet...
- wolfram74 6y agoWell, they've tested it in mars equivalent atmosphere and gravity (through the clever use of pulleys) soooo, hasn't he? he didn't bet you couldn't fly a helicopter on /mars/, just it's atmosphere.
- jvanderbot 6y agoI think it's fairly well established you can. The problem is about whether we will.
- alex_young 6y agoNASA rushing a Mars mission. What could possibly go wrong?
- mrfusion 6y agoTotal Destruction of the universe?
- arnaudsm 6y agoAs long as it does not involve astronauts, rushing the mission and risking Rapid Unscheduled Disassembly is fine I guess.
- j0n5ilver 6y agoIs this one of those YOLO moments?
- stronglikedan 6y agoIf they're anything like college me starting a paper the night before it's due, it'll all go flawlessly.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- DarthGhandi 6y agoThey should be rushing far more given the last 5 decades of progress.
- simonblack 6y agoYes. Why did I get a flashback to the rushed Challenger mission disaster. If they'd waited till the weather was more suitable, it wouldn't have happened.
- klmadfejno 6y agoThe title implies they're behind schedule and need to rush more than expect. Is that the case, or is it simply stating there's a hard deadline by natural forces?
- jvanderbot 6y agoI'm not on the team, but this is the first I've heard of any unexpected or abnormal rush. Schedules are always a little tight, especially with a pandemic on. The rover is basically a brand new self-driving tank with a helicopter launcher and a robotic arm with a swiss-army-science tool and a laser cannon. That's a lot of stuff to get working properly and packed into a rocket. Oh, it has to land like the Falcon 9 as well, except hovering and lowering itself on a tether, like the Air Cav for Mars.
- perryizgr8 6y ago> Oh, it has to land like the Falcon 9 as well, except hovering and lowering itself on a tether, like the Air Cav for Mars. Here's a video that blows my mind every time I watch it. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2I8AoB1xgU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h2I8AoB1xgU Such a complicated landing sequence, and needs to work correctly the first time, all autonomously. And it worked!
- NikolaeVarius 6y agoThey don't call them flagship missions for no reason
- uj8efdkjfdshf 6y agoBecause Mars and Earth takes different amounts of time to complete an orbit around the Sun, launching at the right point in time is absolutely essential to ensure that your transfer orbit takes you to the distance of Mars' orbit at the exact point in time that Mars will happen to be there. You can mess around with your transfer orbit parameters to give you a bit of leeway, but ultimately limits on available delta V and on maximum relative velocity on encounter limit the window of time that you have to launch your mission. See https://trajbrowser.arc.nasa.gov https://trajbrowser.arc.nasa.gov. They have until mid August to launch the mission[0]. If not, the additional cost of keeping personnel employed and hardware maintained for the next 2 years or so while waiting for Earth and Mars to return to the same relative positions can easily cost $150m, if the InSight mission delay is any guide. [1] [0] https://spacenews.com/mars-2020-launch-slips-three-days/ https://spacenews.com/mars-2020-launch-slips-three-days/ [1] https://spacenews.com/insight-delay-adds-150-million-to-missions-cost/ https://spacenews.com/insight-delay-adds-150-million-to-miss...