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Especially rechargeable batteries (that the helicopter uses), which not only discharge under extreme temperatures (especially cold), but also degrade in capacit
by jacurtis 6y ago
Especially rechargeable batteries (that the helicopter uses), which not only discharge under extreme temperatures (especially cold), but also degrade in capacity over time.
Maybe JPL has overcome those with some new battery tech, but extreme temperatures have always been the vain of engineers who have to design technology for cold weather.
It'll be interesting to see if multiple cold-weather days or years eventually kill the batteries off. This helicopter only flies for 90 seconds at a time already. If the batteries degrade by 30%, we are talking about sub-minute flight times.
- dkdk8283 6y agoA significant amount of energy in the battery is dedicated to keeping the electronics warm, which is why the flights are so short.
- vizzier 6y agoVideo from Veritasium about the helicopter that talk with the team about this. He mentions that 2/3rds of the daily energy gathered is used for the purpose[1] Other information about the tech; camera & landing, energy use for heating, flight in low pressure atmosphere, the system to actually land the thing, is also really interesting. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhsZUZmJvaM https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhsZUZmJvaM
- hackeraccount 6y agoI thought I read somewhere that the length of the flight was dictated by over heating. That the thinness of the atmosphere required the rotors to move so fast that it was difficult to radiate the heat produced - radiating that was also made difficult because of the atmosphere.