“It will open up a new area of Mars exploration”

On February 18, NASA’s Perseverance rover landed on Mars. The space agency’s first astrobiology mission aims to look for signs of ancient microbial life and collect samples of rock and soil to be brought to Earth in a future mission. On board the rover is Ingenuity—a helicopter whose main purpose is to attempt a flight in an atmosphere only 1 per cent as dense as Earth’s. The date of the flight is not scheduled, but it is likely to be in May 2021. DAKSHIANI PALICHA speaks to Ingenuity’s chief engineer J (BOB) BALARAM on the significance of the flight attempt and the advantages of a flying probe in the study of the planet

- DAKSHIANI PALICHA

If Ingenuity’s flight is successful, how will that change future explorations?

I think of it as three R’s—reach, range, resolution. Helicopters, just like drones here on Earth, have the ability to get to places where it is very difficult, if not impossible, for a rover or an astronaut to reach. Steep cliff walls, caverns and other geological features are present on Mars. So this ability would be of interest to the scientific community.

Next is range and resolution—even though Ingenuity is not going to fly very fast, the vehicle is capable of forward flights at 20-30 m per second and could cover kilometres in a day. We will not try this, but inherently, helicopters have a much larger range than rovers. Mars has already been explored by various orbital missions—Mangalyaan, the Mars Reconnaissance orbiter, the Trace Gas Orbiter and now the Chinese and the UAE spacecrafts. But imagine exploring all of Earth only from the orbit; you would miss a lot. The ability of a helicopter to carry a high-resolution instrument, like the camera, to get up close and travel long distances opens a new area of Mars exploration.

How did you arrive at the final design of Ingenuity?