[HN Gopher] How NASA Designed a Helicopter That Could Fly Autono...
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       How NASA Designed a Helicopter That Could Fly Autonomously on Mars
        
       Author : hacksilver
       Score  : 215 points
       Date   : 2021-02-18 09:09 UTC (13 hours ago)
        
 (HTM) web link (spectrum.ieee.org)
 (TXT) w3m dump (spectrum.ieee.org)
        
       | 4gotunameagain wrote:
       | I wish we could have more information on the terrain relative
       | navigation implementation..
        
       | dataflow wrote:
       | Obligatory Veritasium video link:
       | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhsZUZmJvaM
        
       | jshier wrote:
       | I had the opportunity to speak with one of Ingenuity's engineers
       | in the NASA pavilion at the EAA Fly In in Oshkosh, WI in 2017 (or
       | perhaps 2016). This was before it had been accepted for the
       | Rover2020 mission but just after they had proven the concept
       | flight capable. I asked him about flight conditions on Mars and
       | what they had to do to get their design airborne in such a thin
       | atmosphere. He made a few points.
       | 
       | 1. Given the thinness of the atmosphere, the counter rotating
       | blades are balanced among thickness, length, and rotation speed.
       | They're essentially as big as they can spin with the power they
       | have at a speed where the tips are just under the Martian speed
       | of sound.
       | 
       | 2. I asked if wind was an issue. He said that it wasn't an issue
       | for the stability of the craft (Martian wind moving much of
       | anything is a movie trope) but the turbulence it caused could be
       | a major issue for the blades, as they're essentially small wings,
       | like a helicopter. The turbulence of a cross breeze could disrupt
       | the flow of air over the blades and cause them to lose lift.
       | 
       | 3. The design of the craft was essentially locked once they
       | confirmed it could fly. They would keep most of their original
       | hardware and software, rather than rebuild anything, which I
       | found surprising. Given this was before they were accepted on the
       | mission I'm not sure if anything changed. It does appear to be
       | pretty equivalent to what we saw there.
        
       | DAlperin wrote:
       | Here's one of the referenced software frameworks (if I understand
       | correctly) used for the ingenuity control systems:
       | https://github.com/nasa/fprime
        
       | f6v wrote:
       | Imagine how far the technology could go had we sent 10 times the
       | missions we do now.
        
       | ryan_j_naughton wrote:
       | Can someone who understands aeronautical engineering explain why
       | they went with a helicopter over a winged aircraft?
       | 
       | My guess is that takeoff would be too difficult for a traditional
       | winged aircraft and VTOL was way too complicated.
       | 
       | But given the thin nature of the atmosphere, a helicopter seems
       | even more difficult to get lift than a winged aircraft.
       | 
       | Can someone explain or link to the science between lift and air
       | density and it's relation to helicopters and winged aircraft?
       | Thanks!
        
         | interestica wrote:
         | > But given the thin nature of the atmosphere, a helicopter
         | seems even more difficult to get lift than a winged aircraft.
         | 
         | Easier to speed up a helicopter's wings (rotors) than speeding
         | up an aircraft which would need more and more runway.
        
         | NikolaeVarius wrote:
         | it needs to fit inside the fairing. also what do winged
         | aircraft use to fly?
        
         | tkinom wrote:
         | Wonder the same thing, I have the impression that Quad or Hex
         | copter would be more stable/reliable with more redundancy build
         | in.
        
           | carabiner wrote:
           | Quad/hex would be less efficient and heavier for the same
           | performance (range, speed, service ceiling), but yes, more
           | stable. In this mission, I suspect minimizing weight (as a
           | rocket payload to be sent through space) and maximizing range
           | (hop flights on Mars on a limited power source) were a
           | priority. This is also why full size helicopters are almost
           | all single main rotors with a TR.
        
         | aero-glide2 wrote:
         | No runways on Mars, so takeoff could be difficult. Maybe we
         | could do that once we have well prepared surfaces. Helicopters
         | can also hover and are much more manoeuvrable than fixed-wing.
         | Lift is proportional to density. L = Cl x .5 x rho x v^2 x S (L
         | is lift, Cl a non-dimensional coefficient which depends on wing
         | shape, rho is density, v is speed and S is surface area of the
         | wing). For fixed wing aircraft, v is speed of aircraft. For
         | helicopters its the speed of the blade (when its in hover. When
         | its moving forward its a bit more complex).
         | 
         | Haven't done the math but the aircraft has to be going pretty
         | fast ('v' in the equation) to generate the required lift. This
         | also means longer runway lengths.
        
       | inetstarrrrrr wrote:
       | What's the point of flying a helicopter on Mars? What
       | scientifically relevant data do you get? Its fun and cool but
       | why?
        
         | pengaru wrote:
         | I find it hard to believe you genuinely asked yourself this
         | question and came up empty before posting this vacuous comment.
        
         | hoseja wrote:
         | Well, you may be able to get places a rover can't. But as they
         | say in the article, this is just a demonstrator to show if they
         | can fly on Mars at all.
        
         | fudged71 wrote:
         | The article covers this.
         | 
         | In the future maybe they can fly with LiDAR to get more
         | accurate surface details for the rovers to navigate with, and
         | finding interesting features
        
         | shatnersbassoon wrote:
         | I would have thought atmospheric data that you can't get
         | elsewhere - you'd be able to learn things about pressure and
         | wind at altitudes that rovers can't get to.
        
           | inetstarrrrrr wrote:
           | I don't think it will fly that high to make a measurably
           | difference to ground level. It only flies for 90 seconds. How
           | high can you get in that time?
        
             | aero-glide2 wrote:
             | This is a tech demo. This will help design future Martian
             | drones.
        
         | simonh wrote:
         | * Scouting possible destinations or routes for the rover.
         | 
         | * Imaging areas from above with higher fidelity than possible
         | from orbit, and from angles not possible from a rover.
         | 
         | * Retrieving samples from areas inaccessible for a rover.
        
         | BelenusMordred wrote:
         | It's just a demonstrator but can travel 100m in each 90 second
         | flight.
         | 
         | For comparison, the Curiosity rover has travelled 23 km over 8
         | years.
        
         | arethuza wrote:
         | Perhaps we could eventually get things like a video of a drone
         | flying over the 4km high cliffs of Echus Chasma:
         | 
         | https://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap080723.html
         | 
         | There is a whole new world out there!
        
         | virtue3 wrote:
         | main thing I've seen on mark rober's youtube is that it allows
         | you to really scout out locations with a speed unheard of for
         | rovers.
         | 
         | Also, you can't really(easily) get a helicoper stuck on rocks
         | :)
        
         | Daniel_sk wrote:
         | To test the technology for next missions. This is just a proof
         | of concept.
        
         | holoduke wrote:
         | Because exploring is our nature. And because it will be the
         | first test or flying something in an alien atmosphere. Tons of
         | data alone from the first 5 seconds is very interesting. It's
         | the first step to commercial airliners on Mars :)
        
       | BorisTheBrave wrote:
       | Can someone explain the phyics of flying a helicopter in such low
       | density atmosphere? It must be less efficient than on earth, but
       | evidently efficiency isn't proportional to density or else it
       | could not fly at all.
        
         | lmm wrote:
         | > It must be less efficient than on earth
         | 
         | No it mustn't. You'd expect efficiency to be higher, all else
         | being equal, since there's less drag to overcome - aircraft can
         | generally fly more efficiently at high altitude on Earth (up to
         | a point). The limiting factor is that helicopter flight only
         | works while the rotor tips are subsonic, so as the air gets
         | thinner the "IAS" that a pitot tube on the rotor (that's going
         | as fast as you safely can) would experience gets lower and
         | lower, and so the flight dynamics will be like a helicopter
         | with a slow rotor, but speeded up. But for a small helicopter
         | the square-cube law is on your side and so a low "IAS" is quite
         | doable.
        
         | aero-glide2 wrote:
         | The blades spin much faster to generate the required lift (lift
         | proportional to density). Mars having lower gravity also helps.
        
         | ldargin wrote:
         | See https://www.wired.com/story/a-helicopter-ride-over-mars-
         | nasa....
        
         | drone_aero wrote:
         | Using actuator disc theory, accounting for 38% gravity and 1.2%
         | air density, Ingenuity would need about 2.1x more power to
         | hover on Mars.
         | 
         | But it's not that simple. The reynolds number which Ingenuity's
         | blades are operating on Mars is extremely low, 10,000 to
         | 20,000. This makes the airfoils less efficient compared to what
         | you might design on Earth.
         | 
         | Compare to a Trex 450 (30% heavier weight equivalent)
         | helicopter on Earth, it's got 10+ minutes of endurance and has
         | a smaller diameter rotor, whereas Ingenuity has a 90 second
         | stated endurance, although that is probably limited by
         | navigation too.
        
           | zyxzevn wrote:
           | Thanks for your answer. It is hard to find good information
           | about the aerodynamics.
        
       | amelius wrote:
       | If you just want images from a different angle, why not tether it
       | to the rover?
       | 
       | Also can't you use a kind of balloon instead to save power?
        
         | [deleted]
        
         | coldcode wrote:
         | I would think the atmosphere is too light to support a balloon.
        
           | gambiting wrote:
           | I do remember reading about this - a balloon would work, but
           | it would be absolutely enormous, far larger than anything we
           | can bring into Mars currently. Maybe some day.
        
             | amelius wrote:
             | Another thing I'm wondering: the drones can probably carry
             | only a small (light) camera, whereas a satellite can carry
             | much more and thus also a much better camera. Wouldn't a
             | satellite+camera be a better option?
        
               | rtkwe wrote:
               | For a given aperture there's a limit to the angular
               | resolution you can get which means you can only see
               | objects above a certain size from orbit. The highest
               | resolution we had in 2013 had a resolution of ~.3m/pixel.
               | That's too large for anything beyond rough mapping for
               | things like landing or a vague plan for driving.
               | 
               | TL;DR a decent camera at <1km is hard to beat from >100km
               | no matter how good the satellite camera is.
               | 
               | https://space.stackexchange.com/questions/1140/whats-the-
               | hig...
        
               | zokier wrote:
               | You mean like HiRISE:
               | 
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HiRISE
               | 
               | or HRSC:
               | 
               | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High_Resolution_Stereo_Came
               | ra
        
         | nharada wrote:
         | There actually have been airship proposals for Mars, but as
         | you'd expect because of the tiny atmosphere they're...
         | different:
         | https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/niac/2017_Phase_...
        
       | sdoering wrote:
       | I find, besides all the extremely exciting, technical challenges,
       | the following sentence incredibly fascinating:
       | 
       | > "This [is] the first time we'll be flying Linux on Mars."
       | 
       | But regardless of that, I find it so incredibly cool and
       | inspiring that during my lifetime, a human flying vehicle will
       | fly on Mars. I was a space nut in my childhood and youth and love
       | to see this.
        
         | neurostimulant wrote:
         | Linux flying on Mars and Electron regularly launched to LEO.
         | What a time to be alive :)
        
       | Animats wrote:
       | I'm amazed they were able to pack enough energy in the thing to
       | get the props to go fast enough to work in Mars's barely there
       | atmosphere. Keeping it upright is standard equipment in even low-
       | end quadcopter drones.
        
       | secondcoming wrote:
       | Could they use it to try blow dust off the Opportunity rover's
       | solar panels to see if it'll boot again?
        
         | kam wrote:
         | No, it's not going to land anywhere near Opportunity.
         | 
         | https://mars.nasa.gov/resources/24729/map-of-nasas-mars-land...
        
         | MayeulC wrote:
         | I guess the atmosphere would be too tenuous to try to blow dust
         | away with it (max pressure should be a bit more than
         | Ingenuity's mass/rotor surface, so not much).
         | 
         | How long before a commercial autonomous helicopter-based solar
         | panel dusting service on Mars, I wonder?
        
           | MayeulC wrote:
           | s/mass/weight/
        
       | happy-go-lucky wrote:
       | > It's kind of an open-source victory, because we're flying an
       | open-source operating system ...
       | 
       | That is in reference to Linux. I think it can be a proud moment
       | for Linus Torvalds and the team.
        
       | londons_explore wrote:
       | Seems shortsighted to end this mission after 30 days.
       | 
       | I imagine it's purely for mission planning complexity reasons.
       | But a more sensible approach seems to be to say "after 30 days
       | you have to limit comms to 100 bytes/sec back to earth and stay
       | 100 meters from the rover".
       | 
       | In the future I could imagine the more modern processor on the
       | helicopter might become handy... Some neural network based
       | navigation system might run on it but not the rover main cpu...
       | Also the helicopter might be able to get very good aerial photos
       | that could be turned into 3d models to figure out the best spots
       | to do science. It should be able to see much better than orbital
       | radars.
        
         | pridkett wrote:
         | > Seems shortsighted to end this mission after 30 days.
         | 
         | At this point, NASA is getting rather famous for this.
         | Opportunity had a 90 day mission that survived for nearly
         | fifteen years. Curiosity, a much bigger and more complicated
         | machine, is still doing science 8.5 years later.
        
         | throwaway0a5e wrote:
         | The official mission length is just how long they have to wait
         | before calling it a success. They expect it to last much
         | longer. Since this is primarily a technology demonstrator once
         | it's a "success" more options open up for actually
         | experimenting with tactics and the limits of the device. It's
         | like how you wait until you've left the parking lot to do a big
         | smokey burnout and see how fast a rental goes in 1st gear.
        
       | retSava wrote:
       | So many interesting details in this article. Snapdragon 801-based
       | hw running Linux, sensor fusion from three sensors whereof some
       | bought COTS from sparkfun (who make breakout boards for sensors,
       | basically the sensor datasheet recommended design). 3 flights
       | planned, but potentially more which will be planned after the
       | three first. 30 day lifetime window, due to dependecy on the
       | rover, which needs to conserve resources.
       | 
       | I would looooove to know more more more about this. What did dev
       | of this look like (eg simulators)? What's the flight envelope?
       | What are the most important risks and how are they mitigated?
       | What internal discussions took place (do this, prio that, don't
       | do X etc).
       | 
       | Just so much interesting stuff! Can't wait :)
       | 
       | edit: from wikipedia: "Each flight is planned to be at altitudes
       | ranging from 3-5 metres (10-16 ft) above the ground.[1] In up to
       | 90 seconds per flight, it could travel as far as 50 metres (160
       | ft) downrange and then back to the starting area".
       | 
       | "The helicopter uses counter-rotating coaxial rotors about 1.2
       | metres (4 ft) in diameter".
       | 
       | Etc. Recommend the wiki page on it:
       | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Helicopter_Ingenuity
        
         | BelenusMordred wrote:
         | I went down this rabbithole not long ago with the rovers on-
         | board computer. The writeup from the people who designed the
         | system was really approachable for someone without any
         | aerospace experience. There's a lot of challenges and tradeoffs
         | involved.
         | 
         | Some takeaways:
         | 
         | > Constrained CPU: 133MHz PowerPC, 128MB RAM, 4GB storage
         | 
         | > Software written in C, OS is VxWorks
         | 
         | > Only get contact a few times a day, rover must be charged and
         | ready each time regardless of uncompleted tasks. Scheduling is
         | hard.
         | 
         | > Some tasks require parts preheated for X time, which depends
         | on ambient temp, they use a lookup table for the time of day
         | instead of measuring the temp directly. (Assume this is for
         | reliability purposes)
         | 
         | > High level activities are constructed in a GUI by the
         | operations team, low-level tasks are written in XML, both are
         | uploaded to the rover as a binary plan file.
         | 
         | It's a good read, do recommend it.
         | 
         | https://ai.jpl.nasa.gov/public/documents/papers/rabideau_iwp...
        
           | milchek wrote:
           | > Some tasks require parts preheated for X time, which
           | depends on ambient temp, they use a lookup table for the time
           | of day instead of measuring the temp directly. (Assume this
           | is for reliability purposes)
           | 
           | That's an interesting one. Guessing that there also must not
           | be that much variation of temp and weather conditions?
        
         | nuccy wrote:
         | Actually the computing power of Ingenuity surpasses one of the
         | Perseverance rover (and probably by a lot). The rover has a
         | radiation hardened RAD 750 CPU (based on PowerPC 750
         | architecture, which was introduced in 1997 to compete with
         | Intel's Pentium II [1,2]) with 250-150nm technology process
         | operating at 200Mhz[3]. Ingenuity's Snapdragon 801 can reach up
         | to 2.5 GHz and is based on more energy-efficient 28nm modern
         | (released in 2014) ARM architecture [4]. This CPU even has Wi-
         | Fi and GPS, though probably not much of a use on Mars :)
         | 
         | 1. https://arstechnica.com/science/2019/11/space-grade-cpus-
         | how...
         | 
         | 2. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAD750
         | 
         | 3. https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/spacecraft/rover/brains/
         | 
         | 4. https://www.qualcomm.com/products/snapdragon-processors-801
        
           | interestica wrote:
           | I haven't seen much on the 'sky crane' portion. It seems that
           | it will just use whatever fuel it has left after the landing
           | procedure to just get as far away as possible. It seems like
           | the perfect place to stick some experimental imagery gear:
           | film everything you can all the way down and transmit it back
           | to Perseverance. And there's the possibility that it would
           | survive its crash too with all hardware intact.
        
           | mzs wrote:
           | There are also two redundant TI MCUs on the copter
           | 
           | >TMS570LC43x high-reliability automotive processor operating
           | at 300 MHz, with 512 K RAM, 4 MB flash memory, UART, SPI,
           | GPIO
           | 
           | https://rotorcraft.arc.nasa.gov/Publications/files/Balaram_A.
           | ..
        
           | donquichotte wrote:
           | Do you know why radiation hardening is not needed for the
           | Ingenuity? Is there a mechanical shield? Or is it just the
           | shorter runtime that makes the use of an off-the-shelf
           | processor acceptable?
        
             | jhurliman wrote:
             | I had the opportunity to go down to JPL and speak with team
             | members about this design decision. The space hardened
             | processors are not fast enough to do real time sensor
             | fusion and flight control, so they were forced to move to
             | the faster snapdragon. This processor will have not flips
             | on Mars, possibly up to every few minutes. Their solution
             | is to hold two copies of memory and double check operations
             | as much as possible, and if any difference is detected they
             | simply reboot. Ingenuity will start to fall out of the sky,
             | but it can go through a full reboot and come back online in
             | a few hundred milliseconds to continue flying.
             | 
             | In the far future where robots are exploring distant
             | planets, our best tech troubleshooting tool is to turn it
             | off and turn it on again.
        
               | nynx wrote:
               | I'm a little surprised they didn't go for three separate
               | computers and compare them for every operation, or
               | something like that, but I'm sure they have their
               | reasons.
        
               | teraflop wrote:
               | I've never seen an off-the-shelf processor that has
               | hardware support for doing that kind of cross-checking on
               | every instruction. And doing it in software would
               | probably add so much overhead that the error-checking
               | would be much more likely to fail than the application
               | code.
               | 
               | If you're willing to relax your real-time constraints a
               | bit, and risk a brief period of incorrect behavior before
               | the error is caught, the problem becomes vastly easier
               | and cheaper to solve.
        
               | trhway wrote:
               | >off-the-shelf processor that has hardware support for
               | doing that kind of cross-checking on every instruction.
               | 
               | it is usually done with COTS CPU by either running the
               | CPUs in lockstep (the simpler early generations of CPU)
               | or by inserting hardware checkpoints at various points
               | like branches, by number of instructions, etc. A recent
               | such commercial system was the triple Itanium from
               | Tandem/NonStop(HP).
        
               | jack_h wrote:
               | There are the ARM Cortex-R series of processors which
               | have two cores running in lockstep for fault tolerance.
        
               | alfla wrote:
               | Do you have a source for those fast reboots? It's running
               | Linux after all
        
               | chasd00 wrote:
               | is Ingenuity running Linux? All of the flight controller
               | software i've seen for autonomous drones don't use an
               | operating system.
        
               | lights0123 wrote:
               | Yep, from the article:
               | 
               | "This the first time we'll be flying Linux on Mars. We're
               | actually running on a Linux operating system. The
               | software framework that we're using is one that we
               | developed at JPL for cubesats and instruments, and we
               | open-sourced[0] it a few years ago. So, you can get the
               | software framework that's flying on the Mars helicopter,
               | and use it on your own project. It's kind of an open-
               | source victory, because we're flying an open-source
               | operating system and an open-source flight software
               | framework and flying commercial parts that you can buy
               | off the shelf if you wanted to do this yourself someday.
               | This is a new thing for JPL because they tend to like
               | what's very safe and proven, but a lot of people are very
               | excited about it, and we're really looking forward to
               | doing it."
               | 
               | [0]: https://github.com/nasa/fprime
        
               | nynx wrote:
               | A few hundred milliseconds seems easily doable with a
               | custom linux distro.
        
               | yason wrote:
               | Unless your /dev/sda wants a fsck. :-)
        
         | RapidFire wrote:
         | This is the coolest part of the mission IMO.
         | 
         | My big question is where does it land? Does it dock with the
         | rover? It seems to power itself via a solar array. About 100
         | days into the mission they plan on launching the helicopter for
         | the tiny lifespan window.
         | 
         | I think the limit on its lifespan is really, "How long until
         | destroyed by wind/dust". And then how long until it cannot
         | charge its own batteries/sustain itself.
        
           | foobarbecue wrote:
           | I agree, this is the coolest part, but the most useful part
           | for humanity is MOXIE.
           | 
           | It lands on the ground. And yes, dust on the panels is a big
           | concern. (I work at JPL but not on Perseverance / Ingenuity)
        
         | noselasd wrote:
         | There's a bit of info here too :
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQu9m4MG5Gc
        
         | manicdee wrote:
         | Veritasium did an episode 'Mars Helicopter' containing some
         | interesting discussions with the team that built it.
         | 
         | https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GhsZUZmJvaM
         | 
         | nm it was already linked elsewhere
        
       | protoman3000 wrote:
       | Unfortunately the article does not talk about how this helicopter
       | would fare in a sandstorm. Are the winds strong enough to tip it
       | over?
        
         | SubMachineGhost wrote:
         | Mars has 1% of earth's atmosphere, so it will not affect the
         | vehicle, The answer comes from an interview with the engineers
         | here : https://youtu.be/GhsZUZmJvaM?t=534
        
         | londons_explore wrote:
         | There is practically no wind on Mars. The wind speed is super
         | high, but the air density is so low it won't impact anything
         | more than dust.
        
           | spaetzleesser wrote:
           | This is really interesting to think about. On Venus it's the
           | opposite. Any kind of wind speed will have a huge impact.
        
       | zeristor wrote:
       | One thing that I have been wondering, if the atmosphere is so
       | thin, then how does the RTG cool? I seem to have nerd-sniped
       | myself.
       | 
       | It needs a temperature differential to generate electric current
       | and it looks to have fins for convective cooling but the
       | atmospheric pressure is a few % of that of sea level Earth.
        
         | gbrown wrote:
         | I believe the fins are primarily radiators. Conduction,
         | convection, radiation.
        
         | pengaru wrote:
         | mars is freezing cold, it's like dust covered ice ball.
        
           | iso1631 wrote:
           | But the heat still needs to leak into the environment, and a
           | thin atmosphere means little convection, so it's still just
           | radiation - same problem as in a vacuum.
        
           | nkrisc wrote:
           | Space is cold and yet getting rid of waste heat is a
           | challenge for any spacecraft. The ISS has giant radiators to
           | dissipate heat. It doesn't matter how cold Mars is if it's
           | difficult to transfer the heat away, such as in a very thin
           | atmosphere which has less capability to carry away heat than
           | Earth's atmosphere. There needs to be some kind of medium for
           | the heat to transfer away (aside from radiation), regardless
           | of ambient temperature. It's why a vacuum-walled thermos can
           | keep things warm even in a cold environment. That's what they
           | were asking about.
           | 
           | Heat can be conducted away by contact with another object,
           | probably not what you want if you're using an RTG to power
           | your spacecraft, you don't want your RTG to heat it too much.
           | It can be convected away, which is more difficult in a thin
           | atmosphere like Mars has. Or it can be radiated away by
           | blackbody radiation, which some certainly is, but that is
           | limited and isn't much.
        
             | trhway wrote:
             | > blackbody radiation, which some certainly is, but that is
             | limited and isn't much.
             | 
             | Boltzman equation has temperature in the 4th power, so it
             | is quickly becomes a lot.
             | 
             | https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thermal_radiation
             | 
             | "Using the formulas below shows a human, having roughly 2
             | square meter in surface area, and a temperature of about
             | 307 K, continuously radiates approximately 1000 watts."
        
         | joshvm wrote:
         | You can read a bit about this in quite some detail in this pre-
         | print from the 80s: https://www.osti.gov/servlets/purl/1033420
         | 
         | ".. radiation, diurnal and seasonal temperature".
         | 
         | "Convective cooling by the Martian atmopshere, even on a cold
         | windy day makes only a relatively minor contribution to heat
         | rejection"
        
       | tomas789 wrote:
       | I implemented a visual-inertial navigation based on the algorithm
       | called MSCKF. It would be really interesting to know what kind of
       | algorithm they are using. They mentioned state propagation in the
       | article. This might indicate they are using an algorithm based on
       | extended kalman filter.
       | 
       | It takes quite some care to make those algorithms robust. Even
       | when you run in an environment covered with diverse visual
       | features. The state divergence is a real thing which essentially
       | means the copter is falling from the sky (Do they call it like
       | that on Mars?).
        
         | blt wrote:
         | Probably MSCKF.
        
       | tpmx wrote:
       | > With all this in mind, getting Ingenuity to Mars in one piece
       | and having it take off and land even once is a definite victory
       | for NASA
       | 
       | Sorry, slightly off-topic: Not a native English speaker. Isn't
       | this sloppy writing? Seems like declaring victory ahead of time?
        
         | Nixinova wrote:
         | The sentence is fine; they're saying the fact that it took off
         | and landed successfully is a victory in itself.
        
           | tpmx wrote:
           | The probe containing the helicopter hasn't landed on Mars
           | yet, though. It's landing in 44 minutes.
        
             | neolog wrote:
             | Then yeah it's bad or misleading.
        
               | tpmx wrote:
               | Thanks.
        
       | nemof wrote:
       | techpod did an episode recently with the engineering camera
       | payload uplink lead from nasa jpl doug ellison. it was very cool.
       | 
       | from the episode summary:
       | 
       | > "Friend of the podcast Doug Ellison from NASA's Jet Propulsion
       | Lab stops by to give us the lowdown on the newest Mars rover
       | Perseverance, which will be landing on the red planet in just a
       | few weeks, plus all kinds of fun info about Lagrange
       | transceivers, making oxygen out of thin air, flying helicopters
       | on other planets, and recording home movies at mach 25."
       | 
       | https://techpod.content.town/episodes/71-curiosity-and-perse...
        
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