Watch NASA’s mission control track the first flight on Mars

 

NASA's Ingenuity helicopter is scheduled to endeavor the principal at any point fueled trip on a different universe at 3:30AM ET on Monday. The twin-sharp edge rotorcraft will attempt to climb 10 feet over the ground and drift set up for 30 seconds while cameras on NASA's Perseverance wanderer record the memorable endeavor from a good ways.

 

The four-pound Ingenuity copter arrived on Mars February eighteenth appended to the underside of Perseverance, NASA's most recent Mars wanderer whose principle mission is to look for indications of antiquated Martian life. Tirelessness has put to the side chance to observe Ingenuity's flight endeavor and report the outcomes back to Earth. Creativity's Monday flight test is the first of five arranged inside a 31-day window that commenced a week ago. In the event that all works out positively, engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California will begin anticipating the following four, which could see the art take off higher and travel farther, depending the aftereffects of its first endeavor.

 

JPL engineers have tried to set assumptions for the practice run during late question and answer sessions: "This is truly hard," said Elsa Jensen, a tasks lead for one of the cameras on board Perseverance that will be fixed on Ingenuity. Tests have worked out positively throughout the most recent week, Jansen added. "In any case, we know there'll be shocks."

HOW TO WATCH

If the flight takes off as planned on Monday, NASA will have livestreams beginning around 6:15AM ET on Monday hosted on YouTube, its website, Twitter, Facebook, and Twitch.

Because of the long data delay between Mars and Earth, we won’t see live video of the flight attempt — it will probably take a few days to get that footage. Instead, NASA’s livestreams will show engineers gradually analyzing data from Mars that will confirm whether or not Ingenuity survived its attempt. Did it fly as expected, or did it get swept away by a gust of wind? Did an alien steal it? We’ll know as soon as engineers find out.

Tune in early on Monday to see how the historic flight goes.

WHAT HAPPENS NEXT

Ingenuity’s power supply will be exhausted upon landing, so it needs to beam data to Perseverance in the most efficient way possible. That landing data dump will include a few low-resolution black-and-white images captured by its down-facing navigation camera underits tissue box-sized body.

 

Sometime Monday, engineers will get other images captured by two cameras on Perseverance — Navcam and Mastcam-Z — with much higher resolution.

 

The images from Ingenuity, along with troves of summary data, will radio signals to a so-called Mars Base Station situated on Perseverance’s body, which will relay those signals to a satellite orbiting Mars, which will then shoot the data through NASA’s Deep Space Network all the way back to Earth. Ingenuity will go into sleep mode and re-charge its batteries for the rest of the day using the small cutting board-sized solar panel above its little rotor wings.

 

On the next Mars day, or sol, engineers will wake Ingenuity back up and retrieve the first 13-megapixel color images taken by its other, horizon-facing camera. More flight data will be sent throughout the following day — “that’s kind of the prize of this project,” Tim Canham, Ingenuity’s operations lead, said.

 

“This is definitely a high-risk, high-reward experiment,” MiMi Aung, Ingenuity project manager at NASA JPL, said Friday during a press conference. Based on several hours of tests, simulations and Martian weather analyses, Aung said “confidence is high” among the engineering team.

 

Ingenuity’s four-foot-long carbon fiber blades successfully unlocked last week after it planted its feet on the surface, and engineers were able to conduct a brief spin test at 50 rpm. For the craft’s actual flight, those blades will be spinning as quickly as 2,400 rpm — fast enough to achieve lift in Mars’ ultra-thin atmosphere.

 

How Ingenuity does on its first flight test will determine the parameters of its upcoming flight tests. Aung said the helicopter’s “lifetime will be determined by how well it lands,” suggesting engineers could be able to carry out more flight tests within the 31-day window if things are successful. After that window, however, it’s likely Ingenuity will retire.