Contra-rotating helicopter now based on Mars
Guest
Joined: Dec 2004
Posts: 1,260
Likes: 180
A long time friend works in that area and just one of their ideas is if you need small samples over a wide area, a sample retrieval system attached to the bottom of an autonomous helicopter that goes and fetches, come home, recharges and dumps the sample, then goes and does it again, allows them to cover huge amounts of territory by comparison to previous vehicles. To put this into context, Opportunity drove 45 or so kilometers in 14 and half years (2004-2018).
Joined: Mar 2005
Aviation Qualifications: Military
Posts: 6,562
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From: Aus
One of the uses given by local news is to use the helo to reconnoiter for interesting sites that the rover may then visit, save time and mileage on the rover wandering somewhat randomly looking for something worthwhile.
Joined: Nov 2009
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From: Inverness-shire, Ross-shire
Joined: Jun 2011
Posts: 202
Likes: 69
From: Falkland Islands and UK
After more than 18 months on Mars, still active. A flight on 6th Sept. lasting 56 seconds, and 97 meters.
31st sortie - not bad for a “proof-of-concept” trial !
https://www.space.com/mars-helicopte...ht-river-delta
31st sortie - not bad for a “proof-of-concept” trial !
https://www.space.com/mars-helicopte...ht-river-delta
Joined: Dec 2007
Posts: 210
Likes: 20
From: Denver, Colorado, USA
As of 9 Nov 23 Completing 118.8 flying minutes, covering 9.3 miles (14.9 km), and reaching altitudes as high as 78.7 ft (24.0 m), 66 flights
Space Ingenuity
Space Ingenuity
Avoid imitations
Joined: Nov 2000
Aviation Qualifications: ATPL
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From: Wandering the FIR and cyberspace often at highly unsociable times
They've done amazingly well with it. An ex colleague of mine wrote his r/c helicopter off ground taxying it for its first ever takeoff and he was standing only a few yards away from it!
Joined: Mar 2004
Posts: 277
Likes: 5
From: Baltimore, MD
So..... Air is 1/140 earth sea level but gravity is 1/3. Mach 1 isn't that fast at all. So it seems rotors wouldn't work at first thought. Hmmm, does it hover? In order to lift, the engine must produce enough HP to accelerate up at 1G (martian) . Then the rotors must convert rotational HP to moving air HP. My first guess would be really big rotors but then Mach 1 comes into play.
Seems like it wouldn't add up.
Seems like it wouldn't add up.
Joined: Feb 2006
Posts: 1,067
Likes: 40
From: On the big blue planet
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingenuity_(helicopter)
skadi
Joined: Feb 2006
Posts: 1,067
Likes: 40
From: On the big blue planet
That would propably destroy Inguenity, with the loss of those big parts of the blade(s) the vibrations will exeed the limits for a safe flight and I am sure the produced lift won't be enough anyway.
skadi
skadi
Ecce Homo! Loquitur...
Joined: Jul 2000
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From: Peripatetic
25cm accuracy on the surface of Mars - and an exceptional piece of software engineering....
https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/...ation_upgrade/
https://www.theregister.com/2026/02/...ation_upgrade/
NASA repurposes Mars Helicopter’s ancient Snapdragon SoC to help Perseverance rover navigate
Upgrade allows robot to travel ‘potentially unlimited distances’ without phoning home for help
NASA has revealed it repurposed the processor the Perseverance rover used to communicate with the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, to help the rolling robot navigate the Red Planet autonomously “for potentially unlimited distances.”
The aerospace agency revealed the hack last week in a post that says it used the rover’s Helicopter Base Station (HBS) because its processor is 100 times faster than the rover’s other kit.
NASA has previously said the HBS runs a Qualcomm 801 processor, a model the mobile chip giant lists as running four custom Krait CPUs using Arm-compatible cores of the company’s own design, an Adreno 330 GPU and a Hexagon digital signal processor.
The Register’s coverage reports the models on Mars run at 2.26GHz and packs 2GB RAM plus 32GB flash memory, and that NASA ran Linux on the machine.
With Ingenuity now permanently grounded after flying 72 missions, the HBS was idle. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s chief engineer of robotics operations Vandi Verma therefore pondered reusing the hardware.
NASA calls the new workload it created for the SoC “Mars Global Localization” and in its post describes it as featuring “an algorithm that rapidly compares panoramic images from the rover’s navigation cameras with onboard orbital terrain maps.”
The agency says the algorithm “takes about two minutes to pinpoint the rover’s location within some 10 inches (25 centimeters)” and that it’s already in production, having been used on February 2nd and 16th.
“This is kind of like giving the rover GPS. Now it can determine its own location on Mars,” Verma wrote. “It means the rover will be able to drive for much longer distances autonomously, so we’ll explore more of the planet and get more science.”
NASA’s post says the software means “Perseverance can be commanded to drive to potentially unlimited distances without calling home.”
That’s a substantial improvement on the rover’s current autonomous navigational tools, which, the post explains, can see the robot become “increasingly unsure about its exact location” and sometimes get it wrong by up to 35 meters.
“Believing it may be too close to hazardous terrain, Perseverance may prematurely end its drive and wait for instructions from Earth,” the post states.
“Tapping into the HBS computer has had its challenges,” NASA wrote, before explaining that it developed checks that see the algorithm run on the HBS multiple times before one of the rover’s main computers checks to ensure the results match.
“During testing, the team repeatedly found the rover’s position was off by 1 millimeter,” the post explains. “They discovered damage to about 25 bits – a minuscule fraction of the processor’s 1 gigabyte of memory – and developed a solution to isolate those bits while the algorithm runs.”
NASA appears to have been too modest to remind us that working on the rover can mean latency of up to 40 minutes, or that the fastest radio aboard Perseverance maxes out at 2 Mbps.
Verma thinks the work done to develop Mars Global Localization, and deploy it on the Snapdragon, will prove important as spacecraft designers use more commercial silicon. NASA’s post says its boffins have “already turned their sights to the Moon, where difficult lighting conditions and long, cold lunar nights make knowing exactly where spacecraft are located all the more critical.”
Upgrade allows robot to travel ‘potentially unlimited distances’ without phoning home for help
NASA has revealed it repurposed the processor the Perseverance rover used to communicate with the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, to help the rolling robot navigate the Red Planet autonomously “for potentially unlimited distances.”
The aerospace agency revealed the hack last week in a post that says it used the rover’s Helicopter Base Station (HBS) because its processor is 100 times faster than the rover’s other kit.
NASA has previously said the HBS runs a Qualcomm 801 processor, a model the mobile chip giant lists as running four custom Krait CPUs using Arm-compatible cores of the company’s own design, an Adreno 330 GPU and a Hexagon digital signal processor.
The Register’s coverage reports the models on Mars run at 2.26GHz and packs 2GB RAM plus 32GB flash memory, and that NASA ran Linux on the machine.
With Ingenuity now permanently grounded after flying 72 missions, the HBS was idle. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory’s chief engineer of robotics operations Vandi Verma therefore pondered reusing the hardware.
NASA calls the new workload it created for the SoC “Mars Global Localization” and in its post describes it as featuring “an algorithm that rapidly compares panoramic images from the rover’s navigation cameras with onboard orbital terrain maps.”
The agency says the algorithm “takes about two minutes to pinpoint the rover’s location within some 10 inches (25 centimeters)” and that it’s already in production, having been used on February 2nd and 16th.
“This is kind of like giving the rover GPS. Now it can determine its own location on Mars,” Verma wrote. “It means the rover will be able to drive for much longer distances autonomously, so we’ll explore more of the planet and get more science.”
NASA’s post says the software means “Perseverance can be commanded to drive to potentially unlimited distances without calling home.”
That’s a substantial improvement on the rover’s current autonomous navigational tools, which, the post explains, can see the robot become “increasingly unsure about its exact location” and sometimes get it wrong by up to 35 meters.
“Believing it may be too close to hazardous terrain, Perseverance may prematurely end its drive and wait for instructions from Earth,” the post states.
“Tapping into the HBS computer has had its challenges,” NASA wrote, before explaining that it developed checks that see the algorithm run on the HBS multiple times before one of the rover’s main computers checks to ensure the results match.
“During testing, the team repeatedly found the rover’s position was off by 1 millimeter,” the post explains. “They discovered damage to about 25 bits – a minuscule fraction of the processor’s 1 gigabyte of memory – and developed a solution to isolate those bits while the algorithm runs.”
NASA appears to have been too modest to remind us that working on the rover can mean latency of up to 40 minutes, or that the fastest radio aboard Perseverance maxes out at 2 Mbps.
Verma thinks the work done to develop Mars Global Localization, and deploy it on the Snapdragon, will prove important as spacecraft designers use more commercial silicon. NASA’s post says its boffins have “already turned their sights to the Moon, where difficult lighting conditions and long, cold lunar nights make knowing exactly where spacecraft are located all the more critical.”
