
Nasa will send helicopter to Mars to test otherworldly flight - mtuncer
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-44090509
======
KineticLensman
Link to the underlying press release [0] which has slightly more info than the
BBC article. There is a bit more background about the project at [1], with
some key points being:

"The helicopter uses counter-rotating coaxial rotors about 1.1 m in diameter.
Its payload will be a high resolution downward-looking camera for navigation,
landing, and science surveying of the terrain, and a communication system to
relay data to the 2020 Mars rover. The inconsistent Mars magnetic field
precludes the use of a compass for navigation, so it would require a solar
tracker camera integrated to JPL's visual inertial navigation system. Some
additional inputs might include gyros, visual odometry, tilt sensors,
altimeter, and hazard detectors. It would use solar panels to recharge its
batteries."

[0] [https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/mars-helicopter-to-fly-
on...](https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/mars-helicopter-to-fly-on-nasa-s-
next-red-planet-rover-mission)

[1]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Mars_Helicopter_Scout](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NASA_Mars_Helicopter_Scout)

~~~
chiefalchemist
"The helicopter uses counter-rotating coaxial rotors about 1.1 m in
diameter..."

Not to be little it but, in short, a drone.

I presume the rocket scientists are jealous ;)

~~~
djsumdog
That's what I thought too. But they've been designing this for years; so it
might have started before drones got as popular as they are.

I mean, drones are just a new name for hobby aircraft. People typically
associate drones with quad-copters, but people were flying tiny helicopters
next to their small replica remote aircraft for decades.

I realize the FAA has official designations for what is a drone (and a lot of
older hobby aircrafts may now technically be drones), but it's a word that's
really come about because the field is now more accessible/affordable.

~~~
reaperducer
> drones are just a new name for hobby aircraft

With the minor notation that hobby aircraft are permitted in some national
parks, while drones are prohibited in all. The Parks Service operates a number
of model aircraft airports in some national parks.

(I'm not moaning about the perceived inequity with the "drones;" just pointing
out a curiosity. I've hated drones ever since they started ruining my ability
to peacefully enjoy nature.)

>it's a word that's really come about because the field is now more
accessible/affordable

I think it's a word that comes about because the marketers know that
douchebags will respond to pretending that they're part of some secret
military high-tech spy ops program, and not flying a Chinese plastic
quadcopter. "Model aircraft" is for nerds. "Drone" is for monster truck owners
and wannabes.

~~~
mikec3010
To me what makes a drone a drone is the control system algorithm that keeps
the aircraft stable. I thought "model aircraft " had to be operated by a
sufficiently skilled operator to keep it from crashing. Whereas "drones "
automate this skill and present a very simple, dummed down interface such as
"go left, turn around, descend" etc

~~~
stephengillie
If only self-leveling was more common in drones. None of the drones I own have
self-leveling, nor have any owned by other pilots that I know.

There are a multitude of ways to pilot quadcopters, combining the 4 different
transmitter modes (Mode 1, Mode 2, Mode 3, Mode 4) with the different control
modes (Acro, Rate, Horizon, etc). The lack of standardization can be maddening
for beginners - it's like learning Git, Github, and DVCS, while learning to
code.

------
sktrdie
So if it falls on its side, something that has a probably a 50% chance of
happening, can it get back up?

I always thought that for exploring another planet, you shouldn't really use
something with wheels or wings.

Something different like small "jumping robots" would make a lot more sense in
a place where you have literally the ability to do 0-hardware maintenance.

Instead of a single expensive flying robot, why not send a fleet of these
little small jumping-robots instead, to more quickly and cheaply explore the
area:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6b4ZZQkcNEo](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6b4ZZQkcNEo)

~~~
azernik
Where do you get 50% from? It's got landing legs, and will be placed right-
side-up to start with by the Mars 2020 rover.

~~~
alexozer
All it takes is to land on the side on one rock and it's over. I would say the
chance is more like 98% over the span of a few years.

~~~
allannienhuis
Vision navigation systems are pretty effective these days - 'avoid big rocks'
seems like a straightforward use case for that. And clearly the landing
systems would need to account for some degree of rough terrain. The wheeled
drones go through a tremendous amount of testing of the various conditions
they would encounter - a flying drone would go through the same engineering
rigour before it was approved for the mission.

Also, I believe most of the activity of these devices is planned out well in
advance, so you could even add human review to some of that process. It could
take a short flight for a few high-rez pictures, land right near (or exactly)
where it took off from, send the pics back to earth for review to pick it's
next landing spot.

------
chriskanan
Very cool. They were trying to get NASA to allow them to send it when I worked
at JPL a few years ago. NASA is very nervous about anything messing up the
main focus of the mission.

------
nickhalfasleep
The NASA Jet Propulsion Lab continues to excel at technology innovation in
support of science.

Make bounce landing work on another planet. Make powered landing on another
planet routine. Make remove vehicle operations on another planet routine. Make
soft landing with a rocket sky crane routine.

------
Shivetya
So why not a blimp? I did not see any mention why they did not consider this
though they did mention the Soviets using balloons on Venus. Is the air too
thin to support any sort of lighter than air vehicle?

~~~
dmurray
It sounds like it might be feasible: the atmosphere on the surface of Mars is
described as the equivalent of Earth at "100,000 feet" (30 km) but the record
for a weather balloon is 53km, and balloons carrying people have gone as high
as 40km.

The helicopter being proposed is "the size of a softball", though, and not the
main focus of the mission. The high altitude weather balloons have been much
bigger and would probably need a dedicated mission.

~~~
amelius
Why don't they test the helicopter at 100k feet then?

~~~
MereInterest
Not having read the article, I am sure that they already did. Nothing gets
sent beyond Earth's orbit without having gone through as much testing as is
humanly possible on Earth. The cost of failure on Earth is several orders of
magnitude less expensive than the cost of failure elsewhere.

I would guess that sending a test helicopter along with another rover would be
to do a feasibility test for larger flight-based probes in the future. Test it
now with a small helicopter, and you use 10-20 pounds of payload in order to
do better wind and atmospheric studies. On the other hand, if you send a probe
that uses flight as its primary mode of transportation, and some unknown
unknown causes it to fail, you've scrapped the entire mission.

~~~
dmurray
They might not have, because it might just fall out of the sky. It's built to
overcome Mars' gravity, not Earth's.

However I agree with you, they will be testing it extensively in as close to
Martian conditions as they can achieve.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _They might not have, because it might just fall out of the sky. It 's built
> to overcome Mars' gravity, not Earth's._

A video has them flying that thing inside a pressure chamber without payload,
so at least in this configuration it has enough power to overcome Earth's
gravity. Probably wouldn't lift off on Earth with the payload, though.

------
DogestFogey
It would be interesting to see how the helicopter handles potential dust
storms which can have winds of up to 94 km/hr.[1]

1:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Mars#Effect_of_dust...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Climate_of_Mars#Effect_of_dust_storms)

~~~
pavel_lishin
Aren't they pretty mild despite this, thanks to the very low density of the
atmosphere?

~~~
John_KZ
They are, but this is a disaster waiting to happen anyway. Extremely high RPM,
no redundancy in rotors or engines, flying in an environment full of dust and
particles, having to land perfectly every time (or get damaged irreversibly),
all these things add up to certain failure. It's definitely very cool, but
it's not going to be nearly as reliable or useful as a land-based vehicle.
Besides, aerial photos have generally little value for Mars (at least for the
surface area such a drone can cover) because the atmosphere is clear and you
can get great imagery from space.

So unless they want to reach an otherwise impossible to climb location, I
don't see the use for it.

~~~
andbberger
> Besides, aerial photos have generally little value for Mars (at least for
> the surface area such a drone can cover) because the atmosphere is clear and
> you can get great imagery from space.

I'm not buying your blanket statement. Atmosphere is not the only limitation -
optics are heavy.

~~~
John_KZ
>optics are heavy

It depends on the optics. Modern optics for the visual range are incredibly
light.

Also, since you assume optics are heavy, why do you think putting them on a
drone is a good idea? You can haul a metric ton of optics in space for years
(if not decades) but that drone can probably carry a handful of kg of
equipment, and not that many cameras.

~~~
andbberger
My point is that you can't just conclude a prior that the capabilities could
be matched by an orbiter. You need bigger and thus heavier optics to match the
performance of a camera on the ground from orbit. The extra mass for the drone
might be less than that needed for the larger optics.

------
ojosilva
You know helicopters in Mars is totally Phillip K Dick material.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_Time-
Slip](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martian_Time-Slip)

~~~
narag
A little more recent:

[https://youtu.be/oJGJEepIOt0?t=38](https://youtu.be/oJGJEepIOt0?t=38)

It's from _Red Planet_ (2000):

[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0199753/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0199753/)

~~~
TeMPOraL
Even more recent: [https://youtu.be/vacjOrVqesM?list=RD7Oq-
ClZ8Gbs&t=299](https://youtu.be/vacjOrVqesM?list=RD7Oq-ClZ8Gbs&t=299)

From the series Mars (2006) -
[https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4939064/](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt4939064/).

~~~
narag
That looks like the very same heli-drone! I had not heard of the series, thank
you.

------
tjoff
Didn't see any mention on how it will be powered, are batteries even feasable?

I thought just keeping rovers warm enough to operate was quite energy
consuming.

~~~
lopmotr
It looks like it's only going to do one brief flight, so yes, batteries
probably are feasible. I'm not sure if it would require more power or less
power than on Earth though since gravity is lower but so is air density for
the blades to act on.

------
pvaldes
Looks like a more efficient and much faster way to explore the area if they
can solve the thinner atmosphere but, if their missions are autonomous and it
seems that can't be modified in real time, what happens with the mars storms?

I hope that they have a software to take measures if the air pressure or the
light levels change suddenly.

Couldn't the differences in temperature between shadowed and sunny areas
create turbulences?

~~~
cududa
Yes to all of this but do you assume no one at NASA has thought of any of
this? Weird.

~~~
pvaldes
Am I assuming that? Where?

This sort of "somebody should have thought about that (and fix it), so don't
say it", is probably the safe way for people working in a big company that
needs to fit in a hierarchy and please their boss. We aren't in this context
and have a bigger margin to freely explore any idea and talk about it. To
wonder about the dust storms is a valid question.

------
ambicapter
Does this make any sense? Isn't Mars' atmosphere much thinner than Earth's?
Wouldn't that count against using rotary wing crafts?

~~~
TaylorAlexander
It’s about 1% the density of earths atmosphere. The craft would have to be
light and have large blades, but that doesn’t seem impossible. The light
atmosphere means huge blades could still spin fast without issue. It’s not
easy but this is NASA we’re talking about. They made a sky crane to drop a
Mini Cooper sized rover on Mars before.

~~~
roywiggins
Also gravity is about a third of Earth's, so that might help a little bit.

------
dooglius
Can't NASA test this in an artificial atmosphere low-pressure low-gravity
room? Obviously there will be real-world concerns that are hard to simulate
like slight damage from spacecraft landing and dust spun up when the copter
takes off, but the article makes it sound like the low density is the big
thing they're worried about.

~~~
certifiedloud
Simulating dust kick-up would be easier than constructing a "low gravity"
room.

~~~
dooglius
It isn't too hard to simulate low gravity, all you need to do is move a large
aircraft in the appropriate parabolic pattern. My understanding is that this
is already how NASA trains astronauts for zero-g environments, and how
weightlessness is done in space movies. Adjusting the path to match Mars
gravity should not be difficult.

~~~
diplocorp
True, but you cannot test a small helicopter inside an aircraft, can you?

~~~
dooglius
I don't see why not, a test that goes 10 feet up, 50 feet over, 10 feet down
should be sufficient. The thing in the video looks like it could fit in a
large cargo plane. Or, are you concerned about turbulance due to being in a
closed space vs open atmosphere?

------
microcolonel
Interesting that they didn't go the multirotor route, seems like it would cut
down on development, complexity, and possibly weight. Maybe single axis
counter-rotor was chosen for having a slightly better area/diameter to lift
generating area ratio.

------
m3kw9
It will need smarts to fly and land, and land especially to save power while
it awaits the next destination command. The land surveys can only see so much
and if you land wrong on a even a small rock, you could get stuck top over

------
fvdessen
Does anybody knows what is the autonomy of this helicopter ?

~~~
djsumdog
Considering the lag in communication to earth, it'd have to be fully
autonomous. It needs to be able to avoid obstacles, navigate visually (that
article states a compass won't work with Mars's magnetic field) and find a
place to land, in direct sunlight, whenever it needs to charge its batteries.

I'm sure NASA has mapped out some waypoints, but there's no way to really
control the actual flight remotely without a human in orbit.

~~~
jessriedel
Yea, the daily flight time (3 min) is much less than signal travel time to
Earth. So the entire flight needs to be autonomous.

------
dugluak
Why not a few quadcopters like GoPro or something. I guess those are more
stable and cheap.

~~~
YaxelPerez
My guess is a normal quadcopter doesn't have a big enough thrust to weight
ratio in Mars' atmosphere.

~~~
baddox
Can someone check my math/physics? The atmosphere on Mars is about 1.7% as
dense as on Earth, meaning that a propeller on Earth will generate 58.8x more
thrust than on Mars. An aircraft on Earth will weigh 2.6x of its Mars weight.
Drones probably need a thrust to weight ratio of at least 1.5 to be reasonably
maneuverable. A drone that has a 1.5 thrust to weight ratio on Mars would have
a thrust to weight ratio of 1.5 * 58.8 / 2.6 = 33.9. That is certainly higher
than hobbyist Earth drones that I’m aware of, but not terribly hard to
imagine. The craziest racing quadcopters I’ve seen have power to weight ratios
of around 10.

~~~
TeMPOraL
They're not limited to commercial constraints of price and safety, so they can
build it lighter, with larger _and_ higher-RPM propellers (to the point they
would break in our atmosphere), and with less battery life. But that answers
the top-level question here: you can't just ship an OTC drone to Mars and
expect it to work there.

------
oh_sigh
Why does the BBC use "Nasa" instead of "NASA"?

~~~
IanCal
>Where you would normally say the abbreviation as a string of letters - an
initialism - use all capitals with no full stops or spaces (eg FA, UNHCR,
NUT). However, our style is to use lower case with an initial cap for
acronyms, where you would normally pronounce the set of letters as a word (eg
Aids, Farc, Eta, Nafta, Nasa, Opec, Apec).

[http://www.bbc.co.uk/academy/journalism/article/art201307021...](http://www.bbc.co.uk/academy/journalism/article/art20130702112133530)

~~~
snug
To piggy back off this, different news outlets have their own set of rules.
For example, CNET (I think) wouldn't use upper case past 4 characters Example:
NASA, Nascar

~~~
ghaff
Style guides also tend to ignore funky punctuation, etc. in company names. For
example, it was pretty standard to drop the ! in Yahoo!. There is certainly an
argument for respecting the wishes of a name's owner but it's also
understandable to do otherwise for readability.

In this particular case, there are also a lot of acronyms that have entered
such common usage (like radar) that capitalizing them would seem odd. And too
many capped acronyms, Studly Caps, hyphenations etc. hurt readability after a
while.

~~~
evincarofautumn
I always like when it’s written “Yahoo!” because I read it with an alveolar
click, as /jahu!/.
<[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alveolar_clicks>](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alveolar_clicks>)

------
giocampa
Well Elon has already sent a car, so a helicopter was the least they could
send!

------
organicmultiloc
If this is the sort of experiment that is getting space on a rocket then I
kind of wonder if NASA is out of ideas.

In other news, Hepatitis C is making a big comeback here in Denver. It's the
sort of disease we used to laugh about being a "third world" problem back in
the day. We don't use the term "third world" anymore, but we are becoming one
nonetheless.

I can't stop thinking about what archaeologists will think about us in a
thousand years, they will struggle so much to even come up with plausible
theories, much less agree on them.

~~~
fastball
Are you a markov chain?

