NASA will attempt at the beginning of April the first flight of a motorized vehicle on another planet, by trying to take off the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars, the US space agency announced on Tuesday (March 23).
For now, this ultralight helicopter, which actually looks more like a large drone, is still folded up and strapped under the Perseverance rover, which landed on the Red Planet last month.
"Our best estimate at the moment is April 8"
for the first flight, said Bob Balaram, chief engineer of Ingenuity at a press conference.
The exact day could still change, however, he said.
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If the experiment is successful, it will be a real feat, because the Martian air is of a density equivalent to only 1% of that of the Earth's atmosphere.
It will be the equivalent on Mars of the first flight of a motorized vehicle on Earth, in 1903. NASA has also revealed that a small piece of fabric from the Wright brothers' aircraft which took off more than a century in North Carolina, United States, had been placed, as a tribute, on Ingenuity, and therefore was currently on Mars.
This first flight is expected to be very simple: after taking off vertically, the helicopter will rise to an altitude of three meters, hover there for 30 seconds, then rotate on itself. before resting on the ground.
It will receive its instructions from Earth a few hours before, but will analyze its position relative to the ground during the flight itself, taking 30 photos per second.
NASA has already determined the terrain over which the helicopter will fly, located north of the rover's landing site.
An $ 85 million drone
Perseverance has yet to finish taxiing to this runway,
"which will take a few more days,"
said Farah Alibay, in charge of NASA for making the link between the teams in charge of the vehicle and the helicopter.
The latter will then be placed in the correct position before being dropped to the ground, under the rover, which will have to roll above it to get away from it.
Perseverance will absolutely have to clear his sight in less than 25 hours, because the helicopter will need the sun to supply its solar panels with energy, and thus be able to survive by warming itself during the frosty Martian nights.
The rover will then be placed from an observation point in order to capture the prowess of Ingenuity with its cameras.
Up to five flights of gradual difficulty are planned, spread over a month.
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Composed of four feet, a body and two superimposed propellers, Ingenuity weighs only 1.8 kg and measures 1.2 m from one end of its blades to the other.
The program for this helicopter cost NASA around $ 85 million.
In the future, such craft could prove crucial for the exploration of planets, being able to go where rovers cannot go, for example over canyons.
The American space agency is working on another flying machine project, as part of the Dragonfly mission ("dragonfly" in French), which will send a drone in 2026 to Saturn's largest moon, Titan, which it will reach. in 2034. Experiments in the flight of non-motorized vehicles on another planet have already taken place in the past, NASA recalled, with the sending in 1985 of weather balloons to Venus as part of the Vega program, a collaboration between the USSR and other countries, including France.