[나우뉴스] [이광식의 천문학+] Next month, a 27-billion-dollar drone will fly in the sky of Mars.

▲ Exploration Rover Perseverance retreats after deploying Ingenuity on the surface of Mars. Imagination. (Source = NASA)

As shown in the movie’Staworth’, it is expected that you will soon see the scene of exploring alien planets with flying vehicles. Next month, a daring challenge to achieve the epoch of space exploration will be attempted in the Martian skies.

On the 18th of last month, the small helicopter Ingenuity held by the probe Perservance, which landed on the surface of Mars, will fly into the sky of Mars in early April. One of the core missions of Perseverance, Ingenuity’s flight over Mars is the first attempt by humans from celestial bodies other than Earth.

For the past month, NASA has been searching for a place where Ingenuity will fly. As an example of the landing of Ingenuity, a flat surface of about 30m in width and 100m in length inside the crater was used as Ingenuity’s takeoff and landing station Selected. In the future, Ingenuity plans to use this area as a base for flight exploration.

In the meantime, the probes sent to Mars, whether stationary or mobile, were unmanned probes used for ground service. Therefore, as it was difficult to access steep slopes or gorges, there were many restrictions in the area of ​​activity. It has long been argued that flying probes are needed to overcome these limitations and explore Mars in three dimensions, but only now is the implementation.

However, flying a fuselage in the Martian sky is a very difficult mission. This is because Mars has only 1% of the Earth’s air density, making it extremely difficult to obtain lift for flight. In addition, maintaining the state of the aircraft was one of the difficulties as the temperature plummeted to -90 degrees at night. To overcome these problems, NASA invested 24 million dollars (approximately 27 billion won) to create Ingenuity by integrating all technologies.

▲ NASA’s Ingenuity Development Team. It is a technology-intensive drone with an investment of 27 billion won.

The body of Ingenuity, which is the size of a toilet paper, is made of lightweight carbon fiber, weighs only 1.8 kg, and is designed to withstand the harsh Martian environment. The power source is 6 lithium-ion batteries, which are charged with its own solar panel during flight. In addition, the legs have elasticity, so the impact is mitigated when landing so that the fuselage or legs are not overwhelmed.

Ingenuity’s flight mechanism is similar to that of a small helicopter, but it does not operate in real time like a drone. This is because it takes about 10 minutes for radio waves to travel between Earth and Mars. Therefore, NASA controls Ingenuity with the flight software entered through the rover for flight and take-off and landing.

In this demonstration, Ingenuity plans to hover in the air at an altitude of 3 to 5 m for about 30 seconds before landing to the surface. The small helicopter is expected to conduct up to five test flights this spring. NASA predicts that the test flight will become more difficult as you go backwards. In the final experiment, a flight is attempted at a distance of 300m.

Ingenuity’s goal is to confirm that’flights can fly on Mars’, and Ingenuity is evaluated to have achieved 90% of the mission goal even if it succeeded only in take-off and aerial halt flight. The Ingenuity team expressed anticipation, saying, “It will be the same moment as the Wright brothers showed that power flight is possible on Earth.”

Earlier next month, Ingenuity will be lowered from Verservance to the Mars surface for its first flight, and the first question is whether the lower Ingenuity can be recharged with solar panels within 24 hours. If charging is not done as planned, the Ingenuity Mission may be difficult to ensure success.

Kwang-Sik Lee Columnist [email protected]