Flying on Mars

Today, flying on Mars.  The University of Houston presents this series about the machines that make our civilization run, and the people whose ingenuity created them.

The planet Mars is a mysterious place. Named after a Roman god, it’s a planet that stimulates the interests of many scientists, engineers, and dreamers.

Mars was first explored by robotic probes in the early 1970s by both the United States and Soviet Union. Every decade since has welcomed various autonomous and semi-autonomous machines to its surface. And while the Red planet is much smaller than Earth it still has a vast amount of land to explore.

Exploring is difficult. Stationary probes can only see a few miles away. Wheeled rovers are slow and cautious. So, the best way to explore large areas quickly is to fly. If you can fly around Mars, you could easily search for potential areas to visit or even see places where rovers can't go.

Flying on mars is not easy. Its atmosphere is very thin. Much, much thinner than ours. An airplane that flies at 100 mph on Earth would need to fly at 1,000 mph on mars. Plus there is the issue of taking off and landing without a runway. But a helicopter – it could be made very compact and would be far easier to launch and retrieve than an airplane.

NASA engineers built numerous prototypes of small electric powered helicopters. Each one tested in special laboratories that simulate conditions on Mars. Whole rooms that have the same air a Martian would breathe. With special harnesses and pulleys that simulate the same gravitational pull as Mars. A Mars not on Mars, you could say.

Ingenuity block.png (NASA.gov): “Block diagram of Inginuity’s major components”

The final design looked a lot like a toy helicopter you could buy for a child. A simple square cube body with spindly legs. Two sets of rotors on top of each other – what they call a co-axial rotor system – provides lift.

Mars_helicopter_on_sol_46.png (NASA.gov): “Photo of Inginuity taken from Martian rover Perseverance” 

But this was no toy. The rotors are four feet in diameter and spin at 3,000 rpm. It weighs about 4 lbs. and operates autonomously. It has a sophisticated navigation system since you can't use a compass on mars and there is no GPS system there.

There are cameras, laser altimeters, radio transmitter, solar powered battery chargers all crammed into a space the size of a tissue box. There are even built-in heaters to keep it warm at night. At the suggestion of an 11-year old girl it was named Ingenuity.

It worked better than expected. Once on Mars, NASA found Ingenuity could fly as high as 50 feet and as far away as 160 feet on a single battery charge. Its planned 30-day life span has been far exceeded and now can be measured in years. The pictures it has transmitted back to earth have been compelling. Remote explorers could now cover far more ground than ever before.

What started as a proof of concept evolved into a useful and far reaching scouting and surveying tool. So much so that new and better martian helicopter designs are already planned to fly in future missions. Not only to Mars, but to Saturn's moon Titan. Oh, one other thing. Ingenuity carries in it a piece of fabric from the wing of the 1903 Wright Flyer. The aircraft that made the very first controlled flight on earth.

I’m Fitz Walker for the University of Houston, and I too am interested in the way inventive minds work.

(Theme music)

https://science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance/ingenuity-mars-helicopter/

https://www.avinc.com/solution/ingenuity-mars-helicopter/

https://www.planetary.org/space-missions/ingenuity

This Episode first aired on September 30, 2026.