(ominous music)
- Sometimes you have to
do something just to
show that you can do it.
When the Wright brothers
flew for the first time,
they flew in an experimental aircraft
and in the same way, the
Mars helicopter is designed
to show that we can fly a
powered helicopter flight
in the Martian atmosphere.
(dramatic music)
- From day one, this was the
unwavering dream of our team
to get our helicopter launched to mars
so that we can get the opportunity
to do that very first
roto-craft flight test
in the actual environment of Mars.
It's extremely difficult to fly at Mars
because the atmosphere is so thin.
Compared to Earth's,
Mars' is less than 1%.
So the first and foremost challenge is
to make a vehicle that's
light enough to be lifted.
And then the second is to generate lift.
The roto system has just been very fast.
2000, 2,200, 2,400, 2,600.
We're spinning between 2,000
and 3,000 revolutions per minute
and it takes a lot of energy.
So it's that balance
of a very light system
yet having enough energy that's needed
to spin the rotors so fast to lift
and on top of it, having
to design in the autonomy.
- It has to be fully autonomous
from the time it takes off
to the time it lands.
What we do do on the ground
is we plan the flights
and so we determine from here
where we want the helicopter to go.
- [Mimi] Our experiment
window is 30 Martian days.
So we have planned up to five flights
of incremental difficulty.
- [Havard] The very first
flight, the main thing is,
we want to get the legs off the ground.
And so we will basically
go up about three meters
and we'll hover there and
then we'll come down again.
And that will be the first
really major milestone.
- Most of the flights will be
at the three to five meter height.
We will be going horizontally, again,
at a few meters per second.
Only go out, you know, 50,
70 meters and come back.
In successive flights, we will
probably push that further,
try to go further.
So our priority will be to
get back engineering telemetry
and not so much images, but
I'm sure we'll return a few,
you know, because they always look cool.
- At this point we've
tested all we can on Earth.
We have mathematical models that shows
how it will fly at Mars
and we've tested it
in the simulated environment
that we can create on Earth.
It really is time now to do
the real flight test at Mars.
- Nothing is a given but we
have done everything we can
in terms of a test program here on Earth.
The way it goes performing
extremely well so far.
It's been doing exactly the
right thing even right now
when it's bolted onto
the Perseverance rover
so it's very good chance
that we will pull it off.
Yes.
But it's still high risk
and none of us forget
that you could have a glitch
that could mean end of mission.
Yes.
- It's going to be exciting reacting
to any surprises we have.
We can't wait. (chuckling)
What's really most important is
everything we're learning here is
for the future roto-craft systems
that we want to introduce
into space exploration.
(dramatic music)
