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Exploration

A Helicopter Droid Is Going To Mars

By Keith Cowing
NASA Watch
May 11, 2018

NASA Watch founder, Explorers Club Fellow, ex-NASA, Away Teams, Journalist, Space & Astrobiology, Lapsed climber.

53 responses to “A Helicopter Droid Is Going To Mars”

  1. MarcNBarrett says:
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    For those who are more educated in math and physics: let’s say the mass of the main portion of the helicopter was, say, 10 kilos. How big would the blades have to be?

    • fcrary says:
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      I’d think the area swept out by the blades would be proportional to the lift. For ten kilos, about ten times the size of this thing, maybe three times the radius. Call it half a meter or so. But you could play games with the rotation rate and the required power, so that’s just a ball park figure.

    • BigTedd says:
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      Also no reason why the blades would not be folderable etc I think we do this now on most naval aviation assets it would not be reinventing anything

      • fcrary says:
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        How many of those naval aircraft unfold the wings or propellers automatically and without any need for ground crews? (Or, with such high confidence they will unfold properly that a ground crew isn’t on hand, just in case.)

        They are talking about ~0.5 meter long blades stowed on a ~0.15 meter bus. That’s three hinges per blade and all of them are load-bearing. Plus the mast and the landing gear, based on the artist’s conceptions. Admittedly, that’s nothing compared to JWST, but for most spacecraft that’s quite a lot of deployments.

  2. TheBrett says:
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    Good stuff! I wish it had more power and communication bandwidth so it could offer up streaming video, but this is pretty cool.

  3. space1999 says:
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    Very cool…

  4. fcrary says:
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    I’m all for CubeSats and small spacecraft, and sending them to Mars is great. But it would be nice to send one which was more than just a technology demonstration. There are at least a dozen good ideas for small, scientific spacecraft which could ride along to Mars with a larger mission.

    I’m afraid I can’t see any real value from a small helicopter on Mars. It is one of the worst, if not the worst, places in the solar system for aviation. And it is not at all clear what a CubeSat sized helicopter could do (other than the gee whiz it’s cool we can do it part.)

    And, while I’m clearly in a bad mood and griping, why is JPL providing the small, secondary payloads going along with InSIGHT and Mars 2020? One of the major benefit from terrestrial CubeSats has been bringing in talent from outside NASA centers and involving a broader part of the community. That value is lost if all the planetary small spacecraft work is done in house at JPL or a NASA centre.

    • ThomasLMatula says:
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      In terms of science that it true. But in terms of coolness this has the potential to be like the FH Tesla. And Coolest might get NASA more Mars funding.

      • fcrary says:
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        You know more than I do about marketing and advertising, but can’t this become a trap? A company or organization is established to do something tangible, and then does some cool, exciting and engaging things to get funding. Things that are really tangential or irrelevant to the organization’s original purpose. If that works, wouldn’t the institution be tempted to put more effort into the high profile spectacles, and drift farther and farther from its original purpose? Isn’t that a way an engineering organization could turn into an entertainment company?

        • ThomasLMatula says:
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          Possibly, but NASA did well in the past with photos like Earth Rise. And they have to do something to get the cool back from SpaceX since SLS won’t do it.

          • fcrary says:
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            Well, SpaceX definitely has that coolness factor, and, in the past, NASA has done well with spectacular images. But, seeing things from the inside out, I worry that NASA has become obsessed with cool images, since that’s what sells, and isn’t taking the less visually exciting sorts of science as seriously as it should.

            For example, Jim Green, now the NASA Chief Scientist and someone who’s career was originally about plots of wiggly lines and the physics they represented, has repeatedly said that wiggly line plots are unacceptable input. He wanted scientific results which he could pass on to higher level managers (and OMB, and sometimes even up to the President) and wiggly lines just don’t cut it. Cool images do.

            But I worry that this is teaching people that science is all about cool images and not about the numbers, details and wiggly lines. I’m also worried about the fantastic images of Jupiter which the Juno project is distributing. They are, undeniably, fantastic and exciting. But they also aren’t real. They are heavily processed, with edge enhancements, color table stretches and other things. I’m afraid a young person will be inspired by them, go to college planning to major in astronomy, and become totally demoralized and depressed by the first sight of a real, true color image of Jupiter.

    • Chris Owen says:
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      Telecom during InSight EDL, what’s wrong with that? JPL has done a fabulous job on this kind of thing – sure I’m biased because I work there but JPL are about as close to SpaceX as cool can get for NASA. A helicopter is a cool idea – keep it up JPL.

      • fcrary says:
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        I guess I’m in a bad mood today, but I’m inclined to say you are just repeating JPL propaganda. Telemetry from InSight’s EDL phase is extremely important, but we’re going to get it with or without MarCO. The plan, from long before any sub-spacecraft were even imagined, is for one of the Mars orbiters to receive, record and relay that telemetry. And that’s going to happen no matter how well or poorly MarCO works. The only added value is saving the people involved an hour of heartburn. The Mars orbiters are operated in a way that introduces about an hour of latency; MarCO will send the telemetry down immediately (or as close to immediately as a ten minute one-way light time permits.)

        That’s not a big deal, since the EDL sequence is totally automated and no one on Earth can do anything about it, no matter how soon or late they get the telemetry. I have, personally, been in the hot seat for critical spacecraft events, and I’d definitely say saving that extra hour of heartburn for the people involved is a charity and something they will definitely appreciate. But since I did the same sort of thing with an hour worth of one-way light time, I can’t really be too sympathetic.

        As far as JPL and coolness goes, I don’t think it’s about JPL’s abilities. It’s about JPL’s efforts to maintain a closely guarded monopoly on as many planetary missions as they can. MarCO or the mini-copter aren’t something that JPL alone could do; it’s something JPL deliberately made sure no one else had the opportunity to do. The next time NASA sends a secondary spacecraft or a small spacecraft along with a planetary mission, why not throw it open and solicit competitive proposals?

        • Chris Owen says:
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          I gave you my thoughts – if you think that’s propaganda well there’s nothing more I can say.

          • fcrary says:
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            Actually, there is quite a bit more your could say. My statement that your opinion was just JPL propaganda was a bit harsh. But I followed it with some details and, in my opinion, valid concerns. You could put my nasty words about propaganda aside and address the details and concerns I expressed.

          • Chris Owen says:
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            Well I’m not sure I want to try and justify MarCo, but here goes. I think deep space “cubesats” are something which will be used in the future – and regardless of whether 1 hour of thumb twiddling during Mars EDL is no big deal, (try telling that to the folks in SFO the day of EDL), these cubesats, if they work are a good opportunity for the future of deep space telecom.

            I think throwing this kind of thing open to bid would be more expensive and less prone to innovation – but I’m not opposed to it. JPL bids on the other missions now.

            I don’t think it’s any surprise that JPL gets to build and manage the Mars lander missions – as one could reasonably say that only JPL has put hardware successfully on Mars.

          • fcrary says:
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            Don’t get me wrong. I like the IRIS transponder (although $1 million and 35 W is quite a bit for a CubeSat) and the MarCO’s antenna is a nice design. I’m happy to see them flight tested.

            But I have mixed feelings about sending CubeSats to Mars on their own. Usable data rates will always be hard for planetary small satellites. The cost of the interplanetary cruise and navigation doesn’t scale with the size of the spacecraft. Whether it’s a eight kilo or an eight hundred kilo spacecraft, you’ll need the same antenna time for tracking, and the same number of person-hours for orbital determination, and for planning and executing trajectory correction maneuvers. Personally, I think the best solution is a large (well, larger) carrier vehicle and telecom relay, which would take a sizable number of CubeSats all the way to Mars orbit.

            Regarding cost, I’m not sure if JPL is competitive. It isn’t obvious, but the size and form factor aren’t what makes CubeSats so successful. It’s the fact that they are cheap enough to operate in a much more risk tolerant environment. 20% (or more) risk of a mission failure is acceptable, especially since it cuts the costs to the point where you can fly two or three (or more) missions for the same budget.

            Most of the usual suspects for planetary missions aren’t set up to think that way. They have a standard way of doing things which is designed to reduce risk to the greatest extend practical, even if that does double or triple the cost.

            I know GSFC is struggling to figure out how to do scientific CubeSats without compromising their historically high success rate. I think that’s missing the point. A friend at Applied Physics Laboratory has told me they’ve more or less given up on CubeSats for similar reasons (their process for spacecraft development isn’t cost effective for Class D or sub-D.)

            And I’ve talked to some of the CubeSat people at JPL. Some of them get the idea of achieving frequent flight opportunities by accepting more risk. Others don’t seem able to understand that concept. (Literally, when we talk, I get the impressing that _not_ doing everything you can to reduce risk is simply incomprehensible.) That approach can produce successful, Class A nanosatellites, but they won’t be CubeSats. Nor will they benefit from the standard form factor, since that approach tends towards custom parts, and the benefit of the standard form factor is being about to buy parts off the shelf.

    • Commenter says:
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      Interplanetary CubeSats are significantly harder than terrestrial CubeSats…so hard, in fact, that they’ve never been done before. Regarding the science…images obtained from the helicopter can be used to identify targets of scientific interest. The moon would be a significantly worse place for aviation!

      • fcrary says:
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        Well, context images are quite useful for a rover. But JPL carefully avoids mentioning that this helicopter won’t add much in the way of context images. Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter has already mapped everything within a few kilometers of the candidate landing sites at 0.3 meter resolution. The mini-copter isn’t going to add much to that.

        • Michael Spencer says:
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          Have a look at the SA piece I linked to above, which characterizes exactly how far and how high this critter will go: not very, and not very, being the answer.

          • fcrary says:
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            I’m still trying to figure out the exact details. I’ve seen some that aren’t quite what Scientific American wrote. But some are based on older incarnations of the idea or study results from three or four years ago. But overall, I’m unimpressed.

            All flights in the first 30 days on the surface (not much scouting ahead for a rover which will operate for one Mars year…) And, now that I think about it, Mars 2020 will have a descent imager, so the helicopter won’t be the only source of near-but-above-the-surface images of that region.

            The number of flights is variously reported as one per day, no more than one per day, and a total of five. The information I’ve found on flight durations I’ve found ranges from 30 seconds to five minutes. Altitudes are in the 10 to 100 foot range.

            The best thing I can say is that JPL is reporting this, in the fine print, as a technology demonstration to allow _future_ aircraft to scout ahead of rovers.

            Although, to be charitable, the original Wright Flyer only managed four flights, at an altitude of 8 to 30 feet and a duration of 12 to 59 seconds. So I guess you have to start somewhere…

          • Michael Spencer says:
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            I’m not fully understanding the point here. Are you (and others) saying that as a small first step it is way, too small? That was my inclination, too.

            But what do I know about flying on Mars? Nothing, and that’s why your comment seemed significant. Could it be that flying on Mars is so difficult that there are very, very basic issues to be resolved, before a more serious attempt is made?

          • fcrary says:
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            I guess I just don’t see where this concept came from or where it’s going. Secondary payloads or sub-spacecraft are a fine idea, but need to be justified and selected on their merits. There are lots of ideas out there for small spacecraft at Mars, and it isn’t clear if this is the best choice. More to the point, it isn’t clear if anyone actually tried to make the case, or if someone just decided to do it. I haven’t even seen any justification for a helicopter as opposed to some other sort of aircraft. In contrast, the New Frontiers concept, Dragonfly, made a good case for a drone-like quadcopter. That was based on controllability of a vehicle which requires completely autonomous flying. (Note that I’d feel different about this if some rich person decided to pay for it as his personal toy.)

            I’m also not sure where this is going. As a first flight, I can understand the minimal performance, and I wouldn’t complain about it if this were a first step. But there’s no indication of plans for a follow-on, version two helicopter. Nor is there a clear need. Scouting ahead of a rover is fine, but someone needs to explain why one inch resolution from an aircraft is that much better then one foot resolution from an orbiter (which we already have.) Since this first vehicle isn’t capable enough for meaningful scouting, I’d like someone to show that future rovers will need (and have) one. But the only rovers on the horizon are Mars 2020 itself, and the second step in a sample return (with a rover which will simply need to collect samples collected by Mars 2020.) So I’m not sure what the point is.

  5. Shaw_Bob says:
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    I use drones regularly to look at things from otherwise impossinle viewpoints. This offers a great opportunity to satisfy our curiosity, in the spirit of past sojourners on the surface of Mars. Seriously, this is a good idea (assuming it can be recharged by the Mummy rover!).

  6. mfwright says:
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    So when will there be something for the Moon? Or does it need to be very expensive and extremely difficult like for the planets? Or going to the Moon is not cool because it’s been done?

    • fcrary says:
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      The Moon doesn’t have an atmosphere worth mentioning, so aviation isn’t really an option. That’s really inconvenient. Aircraft work by pushing the atmosphere around. Without an atmosphere, you need rockets, which work by pushing a stored gas out a nozzle. The former requires power, but the later means expending mass.

      • mfwright says:
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        I was referring to fixation on Mars with billions of funding (Curiosity, Mars 2020, etc) but meager in comparison to the Moon i.e. cancellation of RP. I guess we’re lucky to have LRO still operating.

  7. Orlando Santos says:
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    I just don’t even believe this thing can fly in the thin Martian atmosphere. Again, I wonder how this thing was selected, what the project engineers think about adding this so late in the process, and did we just lose any planned instrument to accommodate this? Is this just something someone pitched to Huckleberry Hound (cmon he looks just like him) and he thought was cool?

    • kcowing says:
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      You are clueless. Seriously.

    • cb450sc says:
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      I will admit my first thought was how the hell can such a thing fly in such thin air? OTOH, I am also pretty damned sure that the review process would include an analysis of the math involved!

      • fcrary says:
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        You can fly on Mars, but it isn’t easy. It’s probably the worst place for aviation of all the places in the solar system where flight is even theoretically possible. In contrast, Titan is a joy. With about twice the Earth’s atmospheric density at the surface and a fifth the gravity, a person could almost strap on wings and fly like Icarus. On Mars, just getting off the ground is a struggle, and doing anything useful once off the ground is almost asking too much.

        • Bob Mahoney says:
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          Hopefully NOT like Icarus. His Dad did better.

          • fcrary says:
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            Hopefully, but Titan does have its problems. The good news is that someone on the surface wouldn’t need a space suit. An oxygen mask and lots and lots of warm clothes would do. But about 5% of the atmosphere is methane, and someone taking this hypothetical flight would have to worry about the oxygen from his mask leaking out into a methane-rich environment. He’d need to be careful unless he wanted to burn up like Icarus.

          • Paul451 says:
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            So it turns out that flying too far from the sun has issues too.

          • John Thomas says:
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            I think someone on Titan will need some kind of suit with a surface temp of -179C and liquid methane.

          • fcrary says:
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            I did write, “lots and lots of warm clothes.” It’s also easier than many thermal environments, since it’s always cold and temperatures don’t vary much. Although, now that I think about it, some of the minor and trace species in the atmosphere are toxic, so you would probably want a sealed suit. But with a 1.5 bar surface pressure, what you wouldn’t need is a pressure suit. That’s a tremendous simplification.

    • HobartStinson says:
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      Already begun flght testing in NASA vacuum chambers.

    • Chris Owen says:
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      Looking forward to seeing the FM built. They’re putting it together right next to the instrument I’m working on in Hibay 2.

      • fcrary says:
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        I hope two spacecraft in the same high bay doesn’t cause problems. Juno and GRAIL were put together in the same high bay at LMA’s Denver facility. The Italian IR instrument on Juno had some problems during integration due to ITAR rules. The people involved were cleared and approved to be on site for Juno, but someone forgot that GRAIL was also being put together in the same bay. That created a problem for foreign nationals, since they were not authorized to be in the same room as GRAIL.

      • Michael Spencer says:
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        Which is what, if I may ask?

    • BigTedd says:
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      I imagine NASA can simulate the conditions you speak of and without much issue. So yeah im sure it really won’t be that much of an issue. How long it remains in use might be the thing but the ability to cover a larger area is well worth the risk surely.

      • fcrary says:
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        Simulating 38% of the Earth’s gravity would be a nice trick. Seriously, there are ways they can test such a vehicle, but it wouldn’t be easy. Suspending it from a cable, or mounting it on a platform, so 62% of its weight isn’t supporting itself. Messing with the pressure, density composition and/or temperature, to keep non-dimensional parameters flight-like. All those things can be done, but they are approximate and can be difficult.

        In any case, take a look at the expected performance. A few to a few dozen flights, of only a few minutes each. That’s not much in the way of “cover[ing] a larger area.”

  8. Larry Lemke says:
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    I joined the NASA-Ames Research Center professional staff as an Aerospace Engineer in about 1980. For the first two years I worked in the Advanced Rotor Systems Technology branch, doing aerodynamic performance analysis of advanced helicopter rotor designs. I then spent the remainder of my NASA career until retirement in 2015 working on advanced space missions of one sort or another. From about 1995 onward, that included conceiving, designing, developing technology for, and proposing numerous Mars missions utilizing heavier than air fixed wing and rotorcraft for Mars Scout, Discovery, and other mission opportunities. That included building and flying two fixed wing UAVs at Mars like conditions at 100,000+ ft altitude on Earth. After retiring from NASA, I worked for 3 years in the Advanced Projects Group at Planet Labs, the leading builder and operator of cubesat spacecraft in LEO. So, when someone proposes to fly a cubesat-sized helicopter UAV at Mars, it gets my attention.

    To me, this announcement by Administrator Bridenstine saying that NASA is going to fly a small, heavier than air UAV on Mars by a date certain only a couple of years from the time of the announcement is déjà vu all over again. We’ve been to this movie before.

    In 1998, those of us who had already been designing Mars Airplane missions for a few years realized that the preferred launch opportunity for 2003 would, serendipitously, arrive at Mars in the first half of December, 2003, right around the time of the 100th anniversary of the Wright Brothers first flight which took place at Kitty Hawk, on December 17, 1903. That happenstance figured in to the mission proposals that a number of competing teams had worked into the 1998 Discovery Mission proposals. Wendy Calvin’s Kitty Hawk mission is a good example. None of those Mars airplane Discovery mission proposals were accepted, but In late 1998, then Administrator Dan Goldin was made aware of the possibility of arriving at Mars in December 2003, and sold the White House on the daring goal of flying a small UAV on Mars on the centenary of the Wright’s achievement. The aircraft was internally referred to as the “Mars Flyer”.

    A number of constraints were built into the circumstances surrounding Goldin’s decision. First, there was no increase in NASA’s budget to go along with the mandate, so funds had to be taken from elsewhere within the Agency. That meant there wasn’t much money (by JPL standards) to build and operate the hardware. A dedicated launch vehicle was out of the question, so the French were prevailed upon to supply a free launch as a secondary payload on an Ariane V. The total volume and shape available on an Ariane V for secondary payloads was-to say the least-peculiar. If a conventional, 70-degree-half-angle cone shaped entry vehicle was to be used to deliver the Mars Flyer to Mars, it could only be about 50 cm in diameter-about the size of a large wok. The mass and volume constraints implied by that meant that the Mars Flyer had to be significantly less than 10 kilograms in mass. Moreover, because the Mars Flyer was a secondary payload, it had to be ready to launch whenever the primary payload (typically, a ComSat) was ready to go. That could be as early as late 2001, as I recall. Of course, it had to be delivered to the French for integration about 6 months before that. The end result was that, in order to meet the Administrator’s promise, the Mars Flyer team had to deliver a tiny but exotic airplane, on an inadequate budget, within 18 months from the word “go”, and with no margin for error in either performance, budget, or schedule. What could possibly go wrong?

    Astute readers will have already realized that history records that NASA did not, in fact, fly a UAV at Mars on the centenary of the Wright’s accomplishment. By Fall of 1999, the Langley Center Director had to confess to the NASA Administrator that he would not be able to meet any of the performance, budget, or schedule milestones required. The Mars Flyer program was quietly terminated amidst massive amounts of acrimony between almost every participant in the program. People were demoted, reassigned, or quit. Lies were told in order to avoid embarrassing truths. Fist fights broke out in the HQ locker room. Goldin had to admit failure to the White House. For a few years afterward, if you suggested that NASA should fly a UAV on Mars, you were treated like a skunk at the garden party.

    One of the main contributing technical considerations contributing to this debacle was the failure on the part of management to grasp the fact that Mars aircraft do not scale down in any simple way. Small Mars aircrafts’ aerodynamic surfaces will always be operating at extremely low Reynolds numbers, compared to anything that most engineers have seen. The power density of the propulsion system has to be at least twice that of an equivalently sized terrestrial aircraft. Minimum gauge of structural elements may make them disproportionately heavy, etc., etc.

    In roughly the 10 year period from 2000 to 2010, NASA’s Space Science enterprise and Aeronautics enterprise collectively spent tens of millions of dollars developing the fundamental technology required to assure heavier than air flight in Mars like conditions. Airfoil design software was validated, wings, propellers, and rotors were built and tested at altitude and in Mars chambers. Those of us who have studied the problem know with confidence that it is possible to build and fly some kind of Mars UAV under some circumstances. There have been a number of Mars helicopter UAV design competitions over the last 10 years ago run by the American Helicopter Association and they all end up with designs that close around the 10 to 20 kilogram range. An order of magnitude reduction in mass-which is what JPL is proposing–seems very ambitious.

    You cannot take any arbitrary Mars UAV design and scale it down to any arbitrary size just to fit into a little bitty secondary payload envelope that happens to be available, and expect it to work. Now I don’t know anything about the technical maturity of the JPL design nor do I know anything about the design team-maybe they are all over these issues like a duck on a junebug. I hope so, because otherwise this is bearing a lot of similarity to the fiasco from 20 years ago.

    • space1999 says:
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      Thanks for the perspective Larry… always wondered what happened to Ames’ work on the Mars airplane. There’s still a one pager on this effort here: https://www.nasa.gov/center

    • Vladislaw says:
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      Could you build one in your garage?

      Is there anything “exotic” or toxic that would impede a build?

      How much budget would you need for for something in 10 kilogram range? The 20 kilogram?

      Is this something beyond crowd funding?

      just curious…

      • fcrary says:
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        Well, not in my garage (since I don’t have one…) but I suppose you could build some sort of planetary aircraft in a very well-equipped hobbyist’s garage. But it probably wouldn’t work, or wouldn’t work well. Some concepts for Mars aircraft have involved toxic materials (hydrazine, which I’m told shocked the people involved from Ames’ aeronautics side…) But that isn’t inherently necessary.

        As for the cost and whether or not you could crowd source it, it depends on how seriously you want it to work and (more to the point) how serious about that are the people taking your hardware to Mars?

        You could build something like this for under a million dollars. But it might only have a one in four chance of actually working. I doubt NASA would even consider adding that to a multi-billion dollar mission. A failure could make the whole mission look bad. With that style of development, someone might even ask if your lithium ion batteries are going to do a Boeing 787 or Samsung Note 7 thing and endanger the mission.

        Developed to the standards of a flagship (class A) mission, which historically have had about a 90% overall success rate (and a higher rate of partial failures with individual instruments or sensors), and for a payload of that sort or size, I’d say $25 million is a good rough guess for what NASA would expect. If they don’t think you can do it for that price, with high probability working and being developed in on cost and on schedule, they’d just say no.

        From the sound of it, someone did propose that, and NASA did say no. At the same time, the current incarnation is being funded at $23 million, but that doesn’t count all the done before 2018 (when they got that $23 million.) And, yes, my $25 million ball park figure did involve cheating and looking at the answers in the back of the book…

        • Vladislaw says:
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          What I was thinking about was a small design that could go on each lander that goes there. Try and incrementally do something more on shoestring than as a major project. But like you say a billion dollar project has to look like a success…

          • fcrary says:
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            Despite the need for a major mission to look perfect, I think you’re right. Unless aviation is the entire focus of the mission, it’s going to take multiple, small steps. But I’m not seeing a plan or commitment to that.

  9. Saturn1300 says:
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    My co-axial RC helicopter will hover on its on. It will only go 5MPH. No flying in any wind I found out after getting up 100′ where there was wind and none on the surface. I could not get it back. I waited too long and cut the motor. I found it after a long search. I made the same mistake again and lost it. I do not fly one above 10′ now. They say the same altitude. Not much of a view. A lot of fun. I hope they land on a flat clear area, It is on the bottom. The rover better not land on a high rock or it might be crushed. Have to have a clear landing site for the drone also. The rover must be out of range to make sure the drone does not hit it.

  10. Michael Spencer says:
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    Looks like more detail on this project has been released:
    https://www.scientificameri

  11. spacetrek2001 says:
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    I hope Bridenstein learns to be more careful than this. I suspect JPL or their acolytes spilled some nonsense into his ear about how “cool” this toy helicopter is. It is a great example of how NASA should NOT work.

    The helicopter was proposed to the Mars 2020 instrument package. It failed. Badly. The engineering and science boards basically found that it was scientifically useless, technically useless, and likely to fail. JPL did an end-run around the review process and talked a certain Congressman into making it a separate funding item snuck into a series of bills. It was created by pork barrel funding, basically, as a giant middle finger from JPL to NASA and the peer review process. Worse, it has sapped time and talent that is badly needed for Mars 2020 for this useless toy. Notice that we haven’t seen “flight testing” for the caching system, but the toy helicopter has seen tens of hours of flight time. And this mission is for what – caching samples, or flying toy helicopters?

    If Bridenstein really likes this method of operating, then there’s no reason for him to come to work. Everyone should just go rogue like JPL does.

    Cowling – you need to look closer into Mars 2020.