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NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity touches down on the Red Planet
- spaetzleesser 6y agoNASA needs to do way more cool stuff like this. Drilling rocks and analyzing them is very useful for science but flying a drone is what gets people excited and inspired. I can’t wait for the drone they want to fly on Titan one day or a submarine diving on Europa. I think projects like this are also driving technology forward.
- macintux 6y agoRelated discussion from a few hours ago. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26688153 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26688153
- krm01 6y agoThe most fascinating part is that this fragile looking drone, looks in perfect shape after such a rough ride through out atmosphere and then an other rough bump entering the mars atmosphere. A drone in a box, getting shipped from China to my place ends up looking all beaten up.
- BurningFrog 6y agoThere are maybe 6 more zeroes on the cost for this drone. That buys a lot of hardening.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- Black101 6y agoI think that they used explosions to release NASA's helicopter, too. Let's see if it flies now.
- martyvis 6y agoReally loving this project. Still wondering though how you can spend $85 million developing a 1.8kg drone helicopter? And how do you actually come up with the estimate to get the budget approved? Yes I understand all the challenges of delivery to a distant planet, the thin atmosphere and lower gravity and extreme temperatures, but wow.
- jshmrsn 6y agoVeritasium has a great video on the helicopter. Early on in the video they explain that Mars’ atmosphere is equivalent in density to Earth’s atmosphere at 100,000 feet, and the record altitude for helicopters on earth is 40,000 feet. https://youtu.be/GhsZUZmJvaM https://youtu.be/GhsZUZmJvaM
- Shivetya 6y agoSince the rover has a microphone I wonder how through the thin air the helicopter will sound?
- jshmrsn 6y agoThey actually have a clip of the sound in the video, and if I remember correctly that sound was recorded in the 1% atmosphere chamber, so should sound similar to how it would sound on Mars.
- pimlottc 6y agoDirect link to footage of test flight with audio: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhsZUZmJvaM&t=343s https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhsZUZmJvaM&t=343s
- virtue3 6y agoI was about to link his video as well. It's really amazing how the ubiquity of all this technology makes people not realize how friggin hard the problems JPL faces are. The friggin rover comes down off a SKYHOOK. Off a rocket platform. And it weighs almost as much as a compact car. CMON.