The Mars helicopter 'Ingenuity', along with the new rover 'Perseverance'
are scheduled to land on February 18th 2021. The local time on mars will be approximately 3:45 pm
at 'Jezero Crater'. Engineers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab have stated the best time to
fly Ingenuity is around 11am local time, and flying at night will be strictly forbidden.
Stick around to find out why! Hello everyone and welcome back to ElderFox Documentaries.
Today's video will feature all you need to know about flying on Mars, how Martian
time zones are calculated and why flying at night is a bad idea - we hope you enjoy.
Let's start with a simple question: what time is it?
I'm pretty sure most of you can answer this question and depending on where you're watching
from, you will all have different answers. Some of you may even be able to calculate
the time in a different part of the world by simply adding or subtracting a number of hours.
But things do get a little more difficult if you try to calculate the local time on Mars.
The planet spins slightly slower than earth making a Martian day just over 24 hours and 39 minutes.
The consensus is to take one of these Martian days - which to avoid confusion is called a sol, and
divide this into 24 parts to get Martian hours, and then divide by a further 60 to get Martian minutes.
All of NASA's mars landers run on Martian time. Many of the engineers have even had special
wrist-watches made based upon mission time. Their lives literally revolve around mars! There is one
standard time on Mars developed by astronomers in the 1830s. It's called Mars Coordinated Time or MTC
for short. All of the rovers have offset times which correspond to MTC, which is known as the
'prime meridian'. So why does this matter? Why is it so important that we know the local time on mars?
Just like on Earth, depending on where the Sun is in the sky, things change. Temperature, visibility,
wind speeds and even the density of the atmosphere. First off, temperature variations on Mars are wild!
In the Martian summer near the equator temperatures can reach a cosy 20 degrees Celsius,
however, during the night temperatures can plummet to -73 degrees Celsius.
At these frosty temperatures critical mechanisms on board the rovers can fail.
For this reason, most Martian landers have built in heating systems to survive the night-time extremes.
This issue is what led to the demise of the 'Opportunity' rover, after experiencing a global
Martian dust storm which blocked its solar panels the battery was expended. During the following
days and nights the heating system was unable to power up, meaning the extreme temperatures
irreversibly damaged the rover's internal components. NASA has avoided this problem in
future rovers using nuclear power in rovers from Curiosity onwards. The mars helicopter Ingenuity
which we're nicknaming as 'Genie' has a multitude of other problems to answer. Unfortunately using
nuclear power would be too heavy for flying on Mars, so this craft uses solar power. Changes
in atmospheric density and wind speeds could also spell disaster for the little helicopter.
Using data from previous missions the team at NASA has concluded that 11am local time
is the best for flying Genie. At this time the solar panels have had the chance to recharge
and the Martian temperature starts to warm, meaning less power has to be used keeping
the internal components toasty. At 11am local time wind speeds seem to be relatively calm,
as opposed to late afternoon where they start to pick up.
Genie will fly for up to 90 seconds at a time, going as far as
three football fields with each flight. The flights will have to be fully autonomous.
It is programmed to never stray more than one kilometre from Perseverance,
and will scout the path ahead. The data it gathers will be signalled back to Perseverance,
which will then relay the data back to earth using better transmission devices.
The Martian atmosphere is 100 times thinner than Earth's. To generate lift, the blades will have to
spin much faster, but the team at NASA has to avoid breaking the speed of sound at the blade tips.
If the speed of sound is broken, the aerodynamics become very complex. The maximum speed at the tip
of one of Genie's blades is limited to 0.7 Mach or 70 percent the speed of sound. So this begs the
question: Why? What benefits will Genie bring to the mission? Well for one, the Martian landscape
can sometimes be hard to traverse, and often the most interesting sites are located in no-go zones,
where the team cannot risk sending a rover. Genie will be able to fly above such hazards and gather
valuable data. But first and foremost, Genie is a demonstration that we can fly on other planets.
The data retrieved from this first flight on another world will help engineers design
even more complex craft; the most exciting being the mission to Saturn's moon Titan.
At this point I'm guessing you already know why flying at night is strictly forbidden. The team
at NASA cannot risk expending the battery during the freezing temperatures. Spending just one night
on Mars without internal heating can be the end of a rover. Also with power already being used to heat
the internal components, the craft runs the risk of its battery being depleted and falling from the
Martian sky mid-flight. This is the exact opposite of what we want - which is a smooth touchdown. If
successful, Ingenuity will expand our understanding of flying in different conditions and propel the
next generation of planetary exploration. But first it has to make touchdown on the Martian surface.
Years of careful planning research and engineering could be literally blown to pieces if anything
goes wrong during the descent. Once the mission hits the Martian atmosphere in February 2021,
it will take just seven minutes for it to reach the surface of mars. The problem is
that it takes 14 minutes for data to be sent back to earth. Once NASA receives the data
that they've entered the atmosphere the landing has either been successful or gone up in smoke.
This landing sequence has been given the name seven minutes of terror. Click here to see how
NASA lands rovers on mars and see the actual footage curiosity took during its descent!
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