Drone To Mars

[Lets Fly]

The first drone will go to Mars on the Lander "Perseverance". The lander will not only have a rock vaporizing laser,
it will have 23 cameras two microphones and a helicopter drone to fly around the landscape. the drone will
have its own camera and be able to communicate with earth through the lander.
The launch will be between July 17th and August 5th. The drone will not take off for two months after landing.
Should be interesting.

 

[Lets Fly]

I would add to this, that having a solar panel on top of our drones would seem to be a smart thing for keeping up battery power.
I'm sure this must have been thought of by DJI.

 

[Slade]

A big First Step. I think drones will be huge when **** sapiens stomp around on that dead planet.

 

[SkyeHigh]

The poor efficiency of current solar panels means they’re no use to our ‘heavy’ and high current drawing drones at present.

You can guarantee NASA’s drone is EXTREMELY light and EXTREMELY expensive. Even then it will be requiring the drone to be on the ground and waiting many, many hours to recharge its batteries. Not helped by the weak sun on the planet and extreme cold.

It’s funny that the graphic says the batteries ‘help’ power the helicopter. It’ll do a little more than help!

Would love to see some shots from that if it gets there in one piece.., and calm winds...

 

[Ars3nal3432]

I sure hope they NASA has a 107 license. Also, I don't see an FAA reg number on it hahaha

 

[Lets Fly]

A big First Step. I think drones will be huge when **** sapiens stomp around on that dead planet.

I think we will find that this planet is far from dead.

 

[Lets Fly]

The poor efficiency of current solar panels means they’re no use to our ‘heavy’ and high current drawing drones at present.

You can guarantee NASA’s drone is EXTREMELY light and EXTREMELY expensive. Even then it will be requiring the drone to be on the ground and waiting many, many hours to recharge its batteries. Not helped by the weak sun on the planet and extreme cold.

It’s funny that the graphic says the batteries ‘help’ power the helicopter. It’ll do a little more than help!

Would love to see some shots from that if it gets there in one piece.., and calm winds...

Yes we certainly want to get there in one piece, and the winds on mars rarely exceed 60 MPH, but with Mars atmosphere being only 1% Earths there would be no problem flying.
The motors on the drone have a very high RPM in order to even take off. Can't wait to see.
I believe there are some very lite solar panels that could add (not totally supply) some power to extend the flight time of a drone. Going to check that out.

 

[SkyeHigh]

Please post anything back you find. Interest stuff! No problem with height restrictions and VLOS for this one. RTH could be tricky with no GPS as yet.

 

[Lets Fly]

The poor efficiency of current solar panels means they’re no use to our ‘heavy’ and high current drawing drones at present.

You can guarantee NASA’s drone is EXTREMELY light and EXTREMELY expensive. Even then it will be requiring the drone to be on the ground and waiting many, many hours to recharge its batteries. Not helped by the weak sun on the planet and extreme cold.

It’s funny that the graphic says the batteries ‘help’ power the helicopter. It’ll do a little more than help!

Would love to see some shots from that if it gets there in one piece.., and calm winds...

Just found this. Check out this You Tube video (Solar Power For Drones-Will That Work). Interesting.

 

[Lets Fly]

The first drone will go to Mars on the Lander "Perseverance". The lander will not only have a rock vaporizing laser,
it will have 23 cameras two microphones and a helicopter drone to fly around the landscape. the drone will
have its own camera and be able to communicate with earth through the lander.View attachment 102498View attachment 102499
The launch will be between July 17th and August 5th. The drone will not take off for two months after landing.
Should be interesting.

I should state, landing February 12th 2021.

 

[Jyruiz]

Very cool.

 

[SkyeHigh]

Just found this. Check out this You Tube video (Solar Power For Drones-Will That Work). Interesting.

Wrong type of drone sadly. Fixed-wing drones have the advantage of forward motion generating lift with relatively low power requirements. The lift counters gravity (it’s own weight) and, basically, friction and wind to deal with.

A quadcopter style vehicle has to generate it’s own lift 100% of it’s flight time and then more energy to get it to move horizontally or gravity wins out.

The enormous size of the propellers on the US Osprey aircraft gives a good idea of what’s needed to get a heavy airframe up and off the ground. The stubby wings give sufficient lift during forward flight. It’s a very inefficient flying design but matches it’s VTOL requirements perfectly. But it can’t do what a quadcopter can - fly in any direction.

But what if we could add some small stubby wings that are always at right angles, ie, rotate, to the direction of flight?? Mmm.

They would have to be above the propellers though but then you could add solar panels.

No harm in imagining!

 

[apeel]

OK. How are they going to keep VLOS. If they don't have to, why do we, huh? ?

 

[SkyeHigh]

OK. How are they going to keep VLOS. If they don't have to, why do we, huh? [emoji16]

Oh, that’s an easy one - there’s no one to hit or complain... at least as far as we know[emoji846]

And no politicians! ( Not being political of course).

But there are eyes in the sky keeping an eye on things as Matt Damon was pleased to learn on his little Martian adventure.

 

[Lets Fly]

Yes we certainly want to get there in one piece, and the winds on mars rarely exceed 60 MPH, but with Mars atmosphere being only 1% Earths there would be no problem flying.
The motors on the drone have a very high RPM in order to even take off. Can't wait to see.
I believe there are some very lite solar panels that could add (not totally supply) some power to extend the flight time of a drone. Going to check that out.

I will add to clarify the 60 or 65 mph wind on Mars would feel like 6 mph on Earth. The drone will not be quite like ours with five test flights over thirty days.
It will fly for approximately three minutes and travel up to about 1,000 feet (300m). No AGL is mentioned yet.

 

[Raptorman]

The solar panel isn't designed to power the drone in flight -- it is way too small for that. But, it can recharge the battery and once the battery is charged the drone will fly using the battery. As I recall the flight time is measured seconds -- less than a couple minutes that is. The surface air pressure on Mars is less than 1% of Earth, though with generally colder temps the density isn't quite so bad but still less than 1% or Earth. I think the surface pressure is about equal to the pressure at 90K feet or about 27.5km.


Brian

 

[John Done]

The mission of the Mars Helicopter drone will be to explore hard-to-reach places on Mars, such as steep rocks, caves, and deep craters, and to test the performance of such devices in the rarefied atmosphere of the planet as part of the Mars 2020 program.

 

[Lets Fly]

Don't forget we land tomorrow, 02/17/21. The drone won't fly for a while I believe but can't wait to see those 47 inch props take off, should stir up some dust.

 

[anotherlab]

NASA calls the landing "7 minutes of terror". Mars is a fickle place for spacecraft, I have my fingers crossed that this one has a successful landing.

I was just thinking that if DJI had been in charge of the Ingenuity helicopter drone, the first flight would be delayed because a mandatory software update would need to be installed.

 

[dipnit]

NASA site says it takes up to 20 minutes to transmit 250 megabits of data to mars. 3-22 minutes to make contact depending on orbits. Could make it real interesting if the drone gets in a bad situation. Cause engineers to go bald and chew fingernails down!