3 ms·

I 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 p

I 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 ago
The 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 ago
  You 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.
  - MichaelZuo 5y ago
    Thanks, for some reason I had a brain fart and thought it’s one giant rotor.
- amelius 5y ago
  Also, the rotors would blow away dust on the landing site, which may be a problem if you want to research dust, but may be an opportunity if you want to see what's beneath it.
- arhpreston 5y ago
  If you're interested in the details of what goes in to developing rotors for a helicopter for an atmosphere we've never built in before you should check out this talk: https://doi.org/10.52843/47ly7q https://doi.org/10.52843/47ly7q
  - MichaelZuo 5y ago
    Thanks! In scaling up the fragility of the material seems very likely to be a big factor, cube-square law and so on. I wonder if there’ll be physical testing of proposed designs, are there even near-vacuum wind tunnels?
    - arhpreston 5y ago
      A lot of that talk compares theoretical results with experiments in a low-pressure wind tunnel (see e.g., the slide at this point https://cassyni.com/events/6GYLBKG5pBd4su8dm9A9FB?t=255.0s https://cassyni.com/events/6GYLBKG5pBd4su8dm9A9FB?t=255.0s for a reference). It's quite a simplistic (2d) setup however. I'm not aware of any more complex experiments.
akiselev 5y ago
> MSH would be able to communicate with orbit directly and would not need rover or lander support. Does that mean it wouldn't be powered by an RTG like the last few missions? Or do you just mean that the MSH will have its own comms independent of a supporting rover/lander?
- BotJunkie 5y ago
  JPL has run the numbers on this as part of the engineering study. The solar panel shown in the concept image (in the center) charges a battery that gives MSH a 10km range or 5 minutes of hover time after charging for a day. It would have its own comms that could reach orbit.
  - akiselev 5y ago
    Ooof that's hard to swallow :(. Would the MSH be so productive that it makes up for the limited operating time? Is mission planning so meticulous that it would be a bottle neck anyway? What about winter? Whats the power budget for instruments during/after flight?
    - BotJunkie 5y ago
      This is all the next step. If they end up putting together an actual mission proposal, they can factor in power budgets for specific science instruments, sun angles and seasonality at the landing site, etc, but they're not quite there yet. Not sure what you mean by limited operating time, though- if you mean that MSH has to spend 50% of its time charging, that's true, but relative to a rover, it can travel so much farther and faster that JPL is arguing it more than makes up for it.
    - minitoar 5y ago
      For reference the rovers can do 100 meters a day. 10km in one day is huge.
      - XorNot 5y ago
        Yeah I was going to post this too: the range of a helicopter like that is massive. Well into the "find an interesting feature and follow it" range.
XorNot 5y ago
Hopefully by the time this thing is ready to be built SpaceX have the Starship flying. Getting payload to Mars is going to get a lot cheaper if they hit even half their goals (even if we're just launching the rocket that goes to Mars on top of a Starship).
- ragebol 5y ago
  Imagine deploying 100 of these helicopters deployed from a single Starship.

MichaelZuo 5y ago

The 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 ago
You 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.
- MichaelZuo 5y ago
  Thanks, for some reason I had a brain fart and thought it’s one giant rotor.
amelius 5y ago
Also, the rotors would blow away dust on the landing site, which may be a problem if you want to research dust, but may be an opportunity if you want to see what's beneath it.
arhpreston 5y ago
If you're interested in the details of what goes in to developing rotors for a helicopter for an atmosphere we've never built in before you should check out this talk: https://doi.org/10.52843/47ly7q https://doi.org/10.52843/47ly7q
- MichaelZuo 5y ago
  Thanks! In scaling up the fragility of the material seems very likely to be a big factor, cube-square law and so on. I wonder if there’ll be physical testing of proposed designs, are there even near-vacuum wind tunnels?
  - arhpreston 5y ago
    A lot of that talk compares theoretical results with experiments in a low-pressure wind tunnel (see e.g., the slide at this point https://cassyni.com/events/6GYLBKG5pBd4su8dm9A9FB?t=255.0s https://cassyni.com/events/6GYLBKG5pBd4su8dm9A9FB?t=255.0s for a reference). It's quite a simplistic (2d) setup however. I'm not aware of any more complex experiments.

akiselev 5y ago

> MSH would be able to communicate with orbit directly and would not need rover or lander support. Does that mean it wouldn't be powered by an RTG like the last few missions? Or do you just mean that the MSH will have its own comms independent of a supporting rover/lander?

BotJunkie 5y ago
JPL has run the numbers on this as part of the engineering study. The solar panel shown in the concept image (in the center) charges a battery that gives MSH a 10km range or 5 minutes of hover time after charging for a day. It would have its own comms that could reach orbit.
- akiselev 5y ago
  Ooof that's hard to swallow :(. Would the MSH be so productive that it makes up for the limited operating time? Is mission planning so meticulous that it would be a bottle neck anyway? What about winter? Whats the power budget for instruments during/after flight?
  - BotJunkie 5y ago
    This is all the next step. If they end up putting together an actual mission proposal, they can factor in power budgets for specific science instruments, sun angles and seasonality at the landing site, etc, but they're not quite there yet. Not sure what you mean by limited operating time, though- if you mean that MSH has to spend 50% of its time charging, that's true, but relative to a rover, it can travel so much farther and faster that JPL is arguing it more than makes up for it.
  - minitoar 5y ago
    For reference the rovers can do 100 meters a day. 10km in one day is huge.
    - XorNot 5y ago
      Yeah I was going to post this too: the range of a helicopter like that is massive. Well into the "find an interesting feature and follow it" range.

XorNot 5y ago

Hopefully by the time this thing is ready to be built SpaceX have the Starship flying. Getting payload to Mars is going to get a lot cheaper if they hit even half their goals (even if we're just launching the rocket that goes to Mars on top of a Starship).

ragebol 5y ago
Imagine deploying 100 of these helicopters deployed from a single Starship.