Ingenuity Mars Helicopter: From Technology Demonstration to Extraterrestrial Scout

On April 19, 2021, NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter successfully executed humanity's historic first flight on Mars. In the flights that followed, Ingenuity continued to explore the boundaries of what was aerodynamically, energetically, and operationally possible, and took on increasingly daring missions in the process. Over time, Ingenuity's mission has evolved from a “Technology Demonstration” of the first rotorcraft to fly on Mars to an “Operations Demonstration” of scientific aerial exploration scenarios on Mars. Ingenuity's activities to date have yielded a rich first-of-its-kind data set and extensive operational experience. This paper describes the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter's operation and technical performance. It details the approach and considerations involved in remotely operating a rotorcraft on Mars from Earth. It presents the performance of the vehicle in the extremely thin Martian atmosphere compared to predicted design values, based on analysis and testing on Earth. The agreement between predicted and observed performance has been excellent. This paper also discusses scientific impacts that Ingenuity Mars Helicopter has been able to contribute to the Mars 2020 Perseverance mission during Ingenuity's Operations Demonstration phase. The performance of the vehicle, the operational experiences and lessons learned, anomalies encountered and their resolutions presented in this paper critically inform the formulation, design, and development of the next generation of advanced aerial rotorcraft platforms for Mars and other extra-terrestrial bodies.
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Copyright 2021 Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology. Government sponsorship acknowledged.
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The research was carried out at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, California Institute of Technology, under a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (80NM0018D0004).