Ingenuity, NASA’s First Commercial Drone on Mars

The Perseverance rover that just landed on Mars has something extra special attached to it. It’s a drone (or helicopter, if you prefer) called Ingenuity, and it is the first drone to ever fly on another planet. The feat took a lot of engineering and design work to accomplish, but it also shows just how far drone technology has come in the past few years.

You might think that flying on Mars would be much easier than it is on Earth. After all, gravity is much weaker there and gaining altitude doesn’t require as much energy. But that’s actually not the case. The main issue is that the atmosphere on Mars is only 1% as dense as ours, meaning that the drone needs a much larger wingspan to catch enough air and generate sufficient thrust.

To overcome this, the team decided to go with a pair of counter-rotating coaxial rotors. Each of them is around 4 feet in diameter and spins at a high rate to work well in the thin atmosphere. They’re powered by a quad-core CPU and GPU, as well as a 55 megapixel downward facing camera. This allows Ingenuity to use a visual navigation algorithm to find where it is on Mars and determine the best way to get to its destination.

Ingenuity also uses solar power to charge its batteries and to keep the craft warm during the icy Mars nights. It will be able to sleep during the day to save energy, and it’s been fitted with warmers to help it survive temperatures as cold as minus 130 degrees Fahrenheit. The drone won’t be carrying any laboratory equipment, which will help keep its weight down and energy consumption low compared to what it would need to carry on a normal mission.

NASA engineers were able to make this drone fly on Mars using techniques that they already had in place, proving that it is possible to take consumer-grade drones on space missions. However, this drone looks very different from the DJI Phantom 4 that you might buy in a store, and that’s because it has to be made to withstand very harsh conditions.

The next big test for Ingenuity will be its flight on Monday, when it will send its first signal from the Red Planet. That’s when we should expect to see some black-and-white and color images from the aircraft as it flies over the Martian landscape. We’ll be sure to update you as we learn more about this historic moment.