12 ms·
JPL's Plan for the Next Mars Helicopter
- zabzonk 5y ago> Aerial mobility gives you reach, range, and resolution Sounds like the 1st Cav in Vietnam - cower, you tentacled Martian fiends!
- srcmap 5y agoWonder if it is practical to design Helicopter with nuclear battery similar to the rover....
- cratermoon 5y agoMuch too much mass. The atmosphere on Mars is 6.518 millibars. Look to the structure and mass of terrestrial birds for a guide.
- scrumbledober 5y agoterrestrial birds which would all have far too low of a lift to weight ratio on mars to ever have any hope of flying. The current mars helicopter is pretty incredible
- cratermoon 5y agoYes, to be pedantic about it, but I didn't say "send birds" or "do exactly what birds do", I said to look to them for ideas. Eliminate every extra gram, optimize aerodynamics and control for the purpose (c.f. owls vs. quail vs. hummingbird vs. woodpeckers) and go from there. Don't try to build a flying machine around power source that is essentially a hunk of dense metal.
- scrumbledober 5y agojust pointing out that you'd have to go to much further lengths than birds on earth have gone
- cratermoon 5y agoNo, you're just missing the point of my argument with and arguing pedantics by insisting on a literal reading what I said.
- mhh__ 5y agoPlutonium is really heavy, if you were to do that it strikes me that you'd be better off having some kind of wireless charging device which the helicopter lands on (But at that point why not solar power). You'd probably already need some batteries anyway as I'm guessing that the transient spikes in power usage would probably exceed any RTG you could fit in a helicopter anyway.
- ncmncm 5y agoProbably you would use strontium-90, instead, if weight was important. Strontium is 7.5 times less dense than plutonium. Strontium-90 produces 0.95W/g, where Pu-238 produces only 0.57 W/g. So, it takes only 3/5 as much, by weight, to produce the same heat as a Pu-238 RTG, although it takes 4.5x as much room. Room is relatively cheap on spacecraft, vs. mass. This makes me wonder why they use Pu-238 RTGs in spacecraft at all. Maybe because it lasts a bit longer?
- ncmncm 5y ago... Probably just because of the industrial process availability of plutonium, as spinoff from weapons work. Sr-90 has no local infrastructure. Which is just dumb.
- science4sail 5y agoA radioisotope thermoelectric or betavoltaic generator would probably be too heavy for a helicopter, so you'd probably need something a lot more intense than simple radioactive decay.
- zabzonk 5y agoDo you see any nuclear-powered aircraft flying around on Earth?
- mhh__ 5y agoYou can't buy aviation fuel on Mars, though.
- gambiting 5y agoEarth also doesn't have any nuclear powered rovers driving on the surface and yet Mars does. Might have something to do with the fact that the risk to humans on Mars is slightly lower than on Earth,no?
- zabzonk 5y agoYes, but also that you can't refill with gas on Mars. And of course we do have nuclear powered vehicles cruising around on Earth. We have also had nuclear powered bombers and cruise missiles, none of which were exactly successful, but not even the US DoD has ever suggested a nuclear powered helicopter. It would be a great introduction to our relationship with Mars if one of the first things we ever did was to spill plutonium across its surface when the helo crashed (as it would, eventually).
- spullara 5y agoNot that likely even in the event of a crash. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_generator#Accidents https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radioisotope_thermoelectric_ge... "This incident resulted in the NASA Safety Committee requiring intact reentry in future RTG launches, which in turn impacted the design of RTGs in the pipeline."
- wongarsu 5y agoFrench EVs are over 70% nuclear powered. We just keep the nuclear generators stationary and use battery buffers in the car to save weight. You might argue it's about risk, but that didn't seem like such a huge deal when we tried to make nuclear cars and planes back in the 50s. RTGs are just incredibly inefficient, and properly shielded fission reactors are incredibly heavy.
- perihelions 5y agoThat'd be difficult in Mars' atmosphere -- but the planned *Titan* helicopter will actually be RTG powered: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(spacecraft)#Design_and_construction https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(spacecraft)#Design_... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18947350 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18947350 ("NASA May Decide This Year to Land a Drone on Saturn's Moon Titan") https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20337042 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20337042 ("A technical look at the Dragonfly Titan mission") >"Flight on Titan is aerodynamically benign as Titan has low gravity and little wind, and its dense atmosphere allows for efficient rotor propulsion.[35] The radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) power source has been proven in multiple spacecraft, and the extensive use of quad drones on Earth provides a well-understood flight system that is being complemented with algorithms to enable independent actions in real-time.[35]"
- jvanderbot 5y agoObligatory plug for Dragonfly: https://www.nasa.gov/dragonfly/dragonfly-overview/index.html https://www.nasa.gov/dragonfly/dragonfly-overview/index.html You _can_ use nuclear power similar to the rover if the lift / weight isn't prohibitive. That means a bigger copter in a thicker atmosphere and lower gravity. Since the power is generated by temperature gradients, cold helps too. Perfect for Titan.
- dogma1138 5y agoWouldn’t an airship be a more viable option for a long term mission on Mars?
- FreeFull 5y agoI imagine with Mars's thin atmosphere, it'd be hard to get enough buoyancy to lift off.
- modshatereality 5y agoIt won't work at high altitude until we start polluting there. What is air density in one of those nice big craters though?
- jvanderbot 5y agoThe atmo is very thin, making the balloon huge relative to the gondola. Some people are quite enthused about it anyway. Including myself. http://www.gaerospace.com/space-exploration/planetary-aerobots/mars-balloons/ http://www.gaerospace.com/space-exploration/planetary-aerobo... With a thick atmo, plenty of sun, and not too much heat / cold in the upper layers. Venus is a _great_ place for balloons. https://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/venus-20070827.html https://www.nasa.gov/vision/universe/solarsystem/venus-20070...
- dogma1138 5y agoI was thinking about a rigid body vacuum airship, landing would be easy because all you need to do is lose the vacuum which can be done with a valve and cost no power. Taking off again can be done over days so you can power it with solar panels if you can’t fit an RTG. I honestly don’t think winds would be that much of an issue they won’t be strong enough to structurally damage the airship they’ll blow it off sure but not break it apart, and crashing into things isn’t as much of a risk at any reasonable altitudes no buildings no trees, sure there are cliffs and mountains but that can be solved with altitude.
- 5y ago
- verytrivial 5y agoWhy do so many website disable zoom? Why?!
- BotJunkie 5y agoIf you're looking for a better resolution version of the concept image, as far as I know there isn't one. The original is here, and it's not great: https://www-robotics.jpl.nasa.gov/tasks/showBrowseImage.cfm?TaskID=353&tdaID=700145 https://www-robotics.jpl.nasa.gov/tasks/showBrowseImage.cfm?...
- verytrivial 5y agoI just wanted to see the folding concept at the given resolution, just bigger, like God and my pinch gesture intended. No cigar. Opening the image in another tab then zooming then I suddenly wonder why on Earth this is required. I know it's not malice, but there must millions of people with sub 20:20 vision who don't want to enable the screen magnifier when pinch is ALREADY A THING.
- tomato44 5y agoJack Parsons will just have to do some real funky stuff to get more plans and technology to make this real :)
- barbegal 5y agoFor me, the value of ingenuity has not been the fact that it flies but rather that is designed to be operated in a far more risky way than a traditional rover. A mission that consisted solely of a single larger helicopter would be far more risk averse. It would travel shorter distances, move slower and have so much redundancy built in that there is likely to be little mass dedicated to the scientific instruments.
- rtkwe 5y agoThe issue is it has to be pretty big to carry much in the way of scientific instruments to begin with. Right now there's no scientific instruments on Ingenuity beyond the camera and that is only really useful for surveying the ground. Also Ingenuity can be risky because it's goal is to test the craft itself so they take risks with it to see how well the design performs at the edges of it's flight envelope.
- BotJunkie 5y agoThe most likely way for MSH to get funded in the near term is as part of NASA's sample return goals. 5kg of science payload is not insubstantial, but even if MSH's primary instrument was just a sampling tool, it could still do some unique stuff. It could collect otherwise inaccessible samples from across a very wide area, and then bring them all back to a centralized location, which a rover can't do very well.
- bobsmooth 5y agoI think one of the most interesting parts of Ingenuity is that it uses off the shelf ARM processors instead of highly specialized (and old) radiation-hardened processors.
- sennight 5y ago> ...ARM processors instead of highly specialized... You've got that backwards: Perseverance is equipped with a RAD750, which is simply a radiation hardened PowerPC 750 - that is about as general purpose as it gets. Ingenuity is equipped with a Snapdragon 801, which is an unhardened Qualcomm processor tailor made for cellphones. I doubt anyone could know the degree to which it is "highly specialized" for cellphones without first signing NDAs from multiple parties. I've always found the most impressive aspect of these programs to be the careful engineering that extends the mission life far beyond the original goals. Ingenuity was engineered to die - on either a cliff face or from radiation poisoning, which isn't interesting - it is wasteful.
- JoeAltmaier 5y agoLots in here, taking me time to unpack. Kind of blue-sky - 30kG is heavy, so maybe its all moot - who's going to dedicate that much mass to this project. Any geology it does, will be contaminated by rotor wash scrubbing the surface material when it lands. Is that an issue? Maybe its a benefit. Can it really react to sample inaccessible places? What is the response time between capturing an image of a face, and getting a response from Earth saying "take a sample!"? Is it even within the battery life/flight time? Can it range outside the rover line of sight? What about radio relay to the orbiter? Surely it can't track that itself, especially in flight. That level of independence may be a pipe dream. I'm in favor of a drone element to the next mission, as long as it doesn't instantly get lost or broken.
- BotJunkie 5y agoI interviewed Bob and wrote this article, so I can answer a few of these. I think JPL's idea is that MSH would be a dedicated helicopter mission, rather than piggybacking on some other mission, so it wouldn't be eating up the mass budget of another lander or rover. Similar to Ingenuity, the flights would be autonomous but the science wouldn't be. MSH would fly up to a cliff face (or whatever), take pictures, land, ask Earth where to sample, and then make a second flight to do the sampling. MSH would be able to communicate with orbit directly and would not need rover or lander support.
- MichaelZuo 5y agoThe rotors would have to be massive to lift 30kg, that may be a stumbling block as it’ll require folding and so on. Seems like it would need a lander at least for recharging right?
- BotJunkie 5y agoYou can see how the whole thing would fold up in the linked article, there's an image from the white paper that shows MSH fitting into the same size aeroshell Mars Pathfinder used. It would run on solar power and recharge itself, just like Ingenuity.
- dylan604 5y ago"You'd shoot a little projectile from the drone that embeds itself in the cliff wall, and then you'd reel it back in with a sample." Is that what would happen? How does the embed de-embed itself? How does the reeling in not end up pulling the drone closer to the cliff?
- polynomial 5y agomainly, precise tolerance engineering. ofc we don't already know the exact composition and hardness of said cliff walls, so your question stands.
- BotJunkie 5y agoI asked Bob about this. There are a bunch of options, but one way to do it is that you use a hollow projectile that takes a core sample, and then you just reel back in the core while the rest of the projectile stays in place.
- dylan604 5y agoWow! Never did I expect that kind of response when I asked a random question on an internet forum. Thanks for the follow up!
- tablespoon 5y ago30kg flying on Mars? Wow! How massive is this thing gonna be. Ingenuity is already 1.2 metres across, so it’s not exactly small. This thing is gonna be massive.
- aboodman 5y ago> 30kg flying on Mars? Wow! How massive is this thing gonna be? It’s gonna be 30kg =P … I’ll show myself out.
- ekola 5y agoIs there a reason they don't send Boston dynamics robots?
- dexwiz 5y agoRadiation hardening is a big issue. Commercial components could fail due to ionizing radiation, at a high enough rate that it puts the mission at risk. Also just genera design. Robots that can be easily repaired and recharged have different design parameters than those that have to go to Mars.
- ekola 5y agoTrue, it won't be easy, but better than sending people there. Spend some billions and in 10 years bring some robots, and explore the planet without risking any human life.
- DamnInteresting 5y agoIt was in the news yesterday that NASA is working with Boston Dynamics to potentially explore caves on Mars with walking robots: https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nasa-human-like-robots-boston-dynamics-spot-explore-caves-mars/ https://www.cbsnews.com/news/nasa-human-like-robots-boston-d...
- ncmncm 5y agoI just hope they have more-experienced engineers to program its control system than on Ingenuity. They were super-lucky on that one. There is absolutely no way that time-registration navigation bug should have been able to have any effect whatsoever on the vehicle's dynamic stability. (You may be sure it wouldn't have, if the Nav guy had done the attitude control too.)
- aero-glide2 5y agoI disagree, it just shows that NASA was willing to take more risks/ fail-fast approach. "if you aren't failing you're not trying hard enough".
- ncmncm 5y agoThat is very far from the sort of risk they mean. Incompetence is never the place to squander your risk budget. There is plenty of competence on the ground, and it is not slower.
- irjustin 5y ago> even for a vehicle that was not designed to do much in the way of science at all Hey hey, demonstrating something is simply possible is definitely "doing science". That's half the battle! > We were just telling the scientists, think big "But not too big..." - Every engineer after the first guy.
- snowycat 5y agoThat solar panel on the top seems awfully small to me. If you look at the solar panel on the helicopter that's already on mars, its almost 3 times bigger than the body. This just looks tiny in comparison.
- BotJunkie 5y agoIt's hard to get a good sense of scale from the image, but the solar panel on the concept is about 0.5m in diameter. JPL has run the numbers as part of their engineering study, and MSH would be able to recharge itself in a day.
- hamburgerwah 5y agoThis is fan fiction. Nasa as nasa will never reach mars again. China yes, Spacex yes, but not nasa.
- aero-glide2 5y agoDidn't know AeroVironment was involved in Ingenuity. They make a lot of cool and tiny military drones. Personally one of my favourite things is how Ingenuity used a lots of off the shelf hardware.