Image Courtesy of Parallel Flight Technology The hover lift efficiency of Ingenuity is 2.07 kW/kg, about half of the hover lift efficiency of the Parallel Flight Technologies beta aircraft on Earth (4.54 kW/kg), which is remarkable given the fact that Mars atmosphere is only 1% of Earth. Ingenuity uses 350W to hover during flight and weighs 1.6 lbs (0.73 kg) on Mars, while PFT’s Beta uses 26 kW. In terms of size, Ingenuity is 19 inches tall and its two rotors are 48 inches in diameter, while PFT’s Beta is 3.28 ft in height and has four rotors of 40 inches in diameter each. In the case of the Beta version of PFT’s vehicle, the disk loading is 36.4 Kg/m 2 and, in the case of Ingenuity, it’s 0.62 Kg/m 2 on the surface of Mars. In helicopter design, the most important number to determine lift is known as disk loading and is expressed in terms of weight over area (Kg/m 2). We reached out to the Ingenuity engineers at NASA JPL and also to the engineering team at Parallel Flight Technologies (PFT) to compare the specifications of the two vehicles, one designed for flying low weight over Mars and one for heavy lifting on Earth. The two blades counter rotate to eliminate torque at 2,400 revolutions per minute (RPM), creating the necessary lift to counter the weight of the vehicle and fly. The rover weighs 4 lbs or 1.8 Kg (which translates to 1.6 lbs on Mars) and the wingspan of the blades is 4 ft. The exact specs are fascinating given the fact that Mars’ atmosphere has about 1% the density of Earth’s, which means the ratio of blade surface to weight is enormous. Even though NASA does not label the unmanned craft as a drone or UAV, it fits the bill: it flies independently of human interaction, is electrically powered, and uses blades to generate lift. Ingenuity was developed at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratories (JPL) in Pasadena, California, and it’s an engineering marvel. Today, we are just weeks away from our first unmanned flight on another planet. Back in 2019 at the SPAR3D event in Anaheim, MiMi Aung, Deputy Division Manager of Autonomous Systems at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, gave a keynote on the challenges of designing a helicopter that would fly on Mars. On February 18th the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) landed its Perseverance rover on the surface of the red planet, and, hanging from the belly of the car-sized craft is a small unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) known as Ingenuity.
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