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NASA recently released a video showing a pair of Mars helicopter rotor blades getting tested at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). The test occurred on Sept. 15, just one day before NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter made a record-breaking flight on the Red Planet. The new dual rotor system recently tested at JPL features two carbon-fiber blades measuring more than 50 inches (1.3 meters) in diameter. That's nearly 4 inches (10 centimeters) longer than Ingenuity’s are.
The rotors were tested inside JPL’s 25-Foot Space Simulator, a vacuum chamber used by NASA engineers to expose spacecraft systems to conditions similar to those they will face during a mission. The stainless-steel compartment spans 85 feet (26 meters) in height, and can simulate the conditions of extreme temperatures and solar radiation found in the vacuum of interplanetary space.
Over the course of three weeks, the dual rotors were spun at exponentially greater speeds to test their durability. A NASA video from inside the space simulation chamber shows a Sept. 15 test during which the blades are spun at Mach 0.95, which is nearly the speed of sound.
Coincidentally, Ingenuity completed a record-breaking flight just the next day. On Sept. 16, the Mars helicopter flew its 59th flight across the Martian surface, reaching an altitude of 66 feet (20 meters) — at the time, this marked its highest flight yet. That record was broken during an Oct. 5 flight, however, during which Ingenuity flew to a height of 79 feet (24 meters). The helicopter has spent nearly 2 cumulative hours in the Martian air, and has flown across a total of 9 miles.
Ingenuity is a test vehicle itself, which has far surpassed its initial life expectancy — that NASA can execute near-simultaneous interplanetary flight tests of hardware in both simulated and off-world environments speaks immensely to humanity’s progress in space exploration as a whole.
Edited by : www.linkedin.com/in/priyanka-v23
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