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Engineer Matt Keennon flies Terry, which is a modified twin version of the Ingenuity helicopter which flew on Mars
Built first powered craft to fly on another planet; Modified version of it being used for research on Earth
In a football field sized building in Moorpark, a strange looking remote controlled helicopter which looks like a flying spider is making wide circles several feet in the air.
But, what s more interesting than the helicopter is the group of people watching it. They are four engineers with the Simi Valley-based aerospace company AeroVironment. They not only built this helicopter, they designed it’s cousin, “Ingenuity.” That’s the unique helicopter which a few weeks ago became the first powered craft to fly on another planet.
ABE PECK, Executive Editor, Inside Unmanned Systems
In Part One of “Inside Ingenuity with AeroVironment Designing It,” key personnel from the company talked about designing and developing Ingenuity’s airframe and some of its major subsystems, including its rotor blades and hub and control mechanism hardware. They also discussed how AeroVironment worked with JPL, Lockheed Martin and others to integrate its work into a vehicle capable of reaching and operating on Mars.
Now, in Part Two ”Challenges Overcome” the engineering team recalls surmounting obstacles so Ingenuity and its 4-foot rotor blades could master the ultra-thin atmosphere of the red planet.
Last month when a small helicopter named Ingenuity took-off from the surface of Mars, it made history as the first aircraft to fly in the in the atmosphere of another planet. It may have also unlocked future possibilities for how NASA explores the surfaces of distant planets.
Sunday on 60 Minutes, correspondent Anderson Cooper reported on the creation of Ingenuity, and the painstaking multi-year testing and planning process that allowed the drone to fly in the thin atmosphere of the red planet.
NASA s rover Perseverance descends onto Mars. NASA/JPL-Caltech It has to be a spacecraft as well as an aircraft, said Ben Pipenberg, a mechanical engineer at AeroVironment, a company that produces drones for military and civilian use. And flying it as an aircraft on Mars is pretty challenging because of the density of the air. It s similar to about Earth at 100,000 feet.
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NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter captured this image of its shadow during the rotorcraft’s second experimental test flight on April 22, 2021. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
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Picture the scene: A small drone the size of a suitcase descends into a dark Martian crevasse perhaps a lava tube that was formed billions of years ago by volcanic activity on the Red Planet. The drone illuminates its surroundings, recording views never seen before by human eyes as its suite of instruments seeks out signs of past or present alien biology. Finally, its reconnaissance complete, the drone flies back to a landing zone on the surface to transmit invaluable data back to Earth. After soaking up the Martian sunlight to recharge its batteries, it continues its explorations of terrain inaccessible to any other machine.