NASA goes hard at flight testing for future Martian helicopters

Earth and Mars are now home to flight testing programs to develop better future Martian helicopters for NASA’s Mars Sample Return Mission. NASA now has new blades for a future Martian helicopter while Ingenuity on Mars has been pushing the limits it was designed for.

Ingenuity returns to its flight test roots

NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter has flown 66 times since it was released from the belly of Perseverance back in April 2021. What was just suppose to be a five flight test campaign, Ingenuity has moved on to operating as Perseverance‘s scout.

However, in recent flights, Ingenuity has returned to its test flying roots as it conducted several altitude and speed tests in the Martian atmosphere.

“Over the past nine months, we have doubled our max airspeed and altitude, increased our rate of vertical and horizontal acceleration, and even learned to land slower,” said Travis Brown, Ingenuity’s chief engineer, in a JPL blog.

Ingenuity was originally just a tech demonstrator, built from off the shelf parts and limited to rather conservative flight parameters. These test have pushed what its designers ever thought the aircraft could do.

These tests will be important come the next “generation” of Ingenuity like helicopters that will possibly come in future missions, like Mars Sample Return.

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NASA in full swing on sampling returning helicopters

Congress has had a lot of looking into Mars Sample Return over the years that NASA has been planning it. While recently it is concerned the program will cost way more than it is worth (to them), it has also requested that NASA explore adding Ingenuity like helicopters to the mission.

These helicopters would be able to retrieve the samples Perseverance has been collecting and depositing around Jezero Crater. While it also adds more complications, like how does it land accurately enough to collect them off the ground, it would be much faster than small rovers.

One item NASA has already been developing are new blades that are longer and spin much faster than Ingenuity’s. A recent test used JPL’s 25-foot-wide space simulator to spin new carbon-fiber rotor blades nearly at the speed of sound, mach 0.95.

“We spun our blades up to 3,500 rpm, which is 750 revolutions per minute faster than the Ingenuity blades have gone,” said Tyler Del Sesto, Sample Recovery Helicopter deputy test conductor. While NASA’s sample return mission is still years away, Del Sesto says these blades are “ready to fly.”