![]() The Ingenuity’s rotor spun at about 2,400 revolutions per minute. On Earth, most helicopters and drones have rotors that spin at about 400-500 revolutions per minute. Firstly, to generate lift, the two rotors ( made from carbon fibre) had to spin much faster than any helicopter’s on Earth. ![]() There are two main ways Ingenuity was able to overcome the hurdles presented in Mars’s atmosphere. '7 minutes of terror': a look at the technology Perseverance will need to survive landing on Mars And the reason for this may simply be that, as laid out above, this task is very, very difficult. Ingenuity’s success marks the first time such a flight has even been attempted outside of Earth. If Mars had the same atmosphere as Earth, it’s lesser gravity means we’d be able to lift Ingenuity with less power than would be required here.īut while Mars’s gravity works to our advantage, this is offset by the lack of atmosphere. This actually gives us a slight advantage. Then there’s the Martian gravity to consider, which is about one-third the strength of gravity on Earth. Testing the craft on Earth required a pressurised room, from which a lot of air would have been extracted to emulate Mars’s atmosphere. ![]() For reference, commercial aircraft fly between 30,000-40,000 feet above the Earth’s surface and the highest we’ve ever been in a helicopter on Earth is 42,000 feet. While Mars does have an atmosphere, it’s much, much thinner than Earth’s - about 100 times thinner, in fact.įlying Ingenuity in Mars’s atmosphere is therefore the equivalent of flying a helicopter on Earth at a height of 100,000 feet. But lift can only be generated in the presence of some kind of atmosphere. ![]() The blades, or “rotors” of a helicopter must spin fast enough to generate a force called “lift”. First, and most significantly, helicopters need an atmosphere to fly. There are several technological challenges to conducting a helicopter flight on another world. ![]()
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