60 years separate Yuri Gagarin's space voyage from the first flight of an aircraft on Mars
The US National Aeronautics and Space Administration, NASA, has failed to lead the 60th anniversary of the beginning of space exploration, a feat accomplished by Soviet cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin on 12 April 1961 when he became the first human to orbit the Earth.
On 11 April, NASA intended to make the maiden flight of an aircraft over the skies above Mars, a feat never attempted before. The following day, the flight was scheduled to be broadcast to the world, coinciding with the United Nations' International Human Spaceflight Day and Russia's Cosmonautics Day.
The significance of the first helicopter flight on an extraterrestrial planet is a historical milestone of such importance that it would have eclipsed the impact of the commemoration of the Soviet cosmonaut's journey into space from the world news agenda.
But it was not to be. The United States has been forced to delay the launch of its Ingenuity mini-helicopter for technical reasons. But it has rescheduled it for 14 April, unless there are any last-minute problems that prevent it, which would require rescheduling.
Ingenuity arrived on the surface of Mars on 18 February sheltered and folded inside a protective shield on the underside of the Perseverance rover. It remained there until 21 March, when the protective shell was ejected.
The next step came on 3 April, when the tiny device detached from the mother vehicle and landed on the Martian soil. From then on, Perseverance moved several metres to allow sunlight to hit the mini helicopter's solar panels and recharge its six Sony-developed lithium-ion batteries, which provide more than 200 watts of power at 4.3 volts.
Ingenuity is a tiny technology demonstration aerial vehicle weighing 1.8 kilos, but due to the gravity and air density conditions on the Red Planet it weighs 0.68 kilos. In reality, it is a drone capable of fully autonomous flight but with very limited capabilities.
It has two superimposed carbon fibre coaxial rotors, one on top of the other on the same vertical axis. Both rotate in opposite directions, which stabilises the aircraft in flight without the need for a tail rotor.
Ingenuity will not be carrying out any experiments, nor does it have any scientific equipment on board. It only incorporates a laser altimeter and two cameras, one black and white for navigation, which is aimed at the ground and has a resolution of 0.5 megapixels. The other is a colour camera pointing to the horizon with a resolution of 13 megapixels.
The US engineers have taken into account the enormous difficulties on the Red Planet for take-off. The atmospheric pressure is about one per cent of Earth's, which is equivalent to lifting off from several kilometres above the ground. If successful, "we will gain valuable data from the Mars flight to compare with models, simulations and tests conducted on Earth," said Thomas Zurbuchen, NASA's associate administrator for science.
The flight campaign will last for 30 days, during which time it will be able to perform only five manoeuvres in the Martian air. Each manoeuvre will last a maximum of 90 seconds. In addition, engineers have limited the flight ceiling and it will only rise a maximum of 5 metres.
Ingenuity's first flight will be very basic. The helicopter will rise to a height of 3 metres at a speed of about 1 metre per second. It will hover for 20 seconds and take three colour and four black and white images. It will then descend at the same speed.
It will be a flight similar to that of the Soviet aviator, in terms of its short duration in time. But it will be different in terms of mission control. Gagarin remained in orbit around the Earth for a mere 89 minutes of the 108 minutes of his mission and only circled the Earth once, far less than later manned missions.
But it was an automatic flight, in which control of operations was exercised from the ground and the pilot could not carry out any action on the controls in front of him. Only in an emergency could Gagarin unlock the control system using the secret code contained in an envelope he carried with him.
In the case of Ingenuity, the entire flight is autonomous. Engineers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena (JPL) have installed a pair of microcomputers in the helicopter to govern operations. One is for navigation control, with a 2.26 GHz Qualcomm Snapdragon 801 quad-core processor. The other is an ARM Cortex-R5 dedicated to flight control.
The main limitation in Ingenuity's memory is to avoid colliding with the Perseverance rover, which will observe the flight from a distance of about 65 metres and send data and images transmitted by Ingenuity to NASA's Deep Space Network.
