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The Triumph Of Ingenuity

Ingenuity The Ingenuity Mars helicopter performed 72 flights over nearly three years. (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU) The ongoing triumph of Ingenuity by William Pomerantz Monday, April 22, 2024 Bookmark and Share This is my love letter to Ingenuity. I remember when I first heard about the concept of a small helicopter designed to catch a ride with a rover bound for the Martian surface. At the time, my wife worked as part of the “Mars Mafia” at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory: a wonderful job that meant she got to bring intriguing ideas and fascinating discoveries home from work regularly. My first reaction to the idea of a Martian drone was a quick sequence: No way! Could that even work? There's barely any atmosphere there. But could you imagine if it did work? No one has ever seen anything like that before. That would be incredible! As the landing date for Perseverance and Ingenuity approached, I asked my JPL friends for their guesses as to how many times the helicopter would fly. By far the most common answer was that it would never make it off the ground in one piece. As I learned more about the idea, I marveled at the balance between the simplicity of the overall concept and the complexity of some of the engineering specifics required to make a helicopter fly on a planet where the atmospheric pressure at the surface is only 1% of what it is here on Earth (where it's already extremely challenging to make helicopters fly!). While many people, myself included, were wondering what was possible, small teams at JPL and AeroVironment were creating what was possible. A quick, hardware-rich sprint by a team of incredible engineers, technicians, and project managers allowed the Ingenuity Mars helicopter project to be completed on schedule—words we too rarely get to say in the world of space exploration. As the landing date for Perseverance and Ingenuity approached, I asked my JPL friends for their guesses as to how many times the helicopter would fly. By far the most common answer was that it would never make it off the ground in one piece. Another subset of people thought Ingenuity might fly once or twice. After the nerve-wracking deployment of the helicopter from under the belly of Perseverance, followed by a few weeks of wiggling rotors and commissioning the vehicle, the world was treated to what you see in this GIF: the first aircraft to perform powered, controlled flight on a planet other than Earth. Ingenuity (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech) This was a “Wright Brothers moment,” happening in our lifetimes, on another world. The impossible becoming possible. A new mode of peaceful exploration, coming online right before our eyes, in glorious full-color video. Over the next three Earth years, Ingenuity would go on to surpass every expectation. From an initial target of five flights and 30 Martian days (sols), Ingenuity achieved 72 flights and about 1,000 sols. Ingenuity flew higher, faster, and further over more hazardous terrain than ever imagined. It returned first-of-its-kind images of the Perseverance rover, its backshell, and more. It gave us up-close images of Martian vistas that we're currently unable to explore by rover or with orbiters. The little helicopter that could survived a Martian winter with barely any damage. Every day, every flight, every image brought us precious new knowledge and expanded the horizons of humanity’s understanding of our closest planetary neighbor. Along the way, some of the rover-centric teammates who had first seen Ingenuity as a distraction came to view the helicopter as an incredible new tool. The operations team is constantly faced with deciding between sending the rover to explore the most interesting territory and avoiding those same areas if the landscape might damage and strand the rover. It’s a tension that the JPL team is extraordinarily good at managing, but a tension nonetheless. If the choice ever became stand down or keep pushing, the team wanted to keep pushing. About 60 flights into Ingenuity’s planned five-flight mission, I had the great honor of joining AeroVironment to run the team responsible for our contributions to Ingenuity and the next generation of Mars helicopters. Ingenuity was still in excellent condition and was responding to every new challenge we gave it, making aerial exploration of Mars seem almost easy. But still, as we started what was effectively our 12th victory lap after a race well run, we knew that every day Ingenuity phoned home was a gift. As I got to know the team at AeroVironment and as I became reacquainted with the JPLers on the mission, one of the questions I asked was how people would like to see the mission end. We all wanted to see Ingenuity complete as many flights as possible; but I wanted to hear what the people who quite literally built Ingenuity thought. Should Ingenuity earn a quiet retirement in some picturesque location? Or should we push the edges of the envelope until at last we ask Ingenuity to do something it can’t manage, and see it fail in flight? I received a range of strongly held responses to my question, but the overwhelming majority of the Ingenuity team was aligned. They reinforced that this mission was designed as a technology demonstration, and the best way to honor the spirit of Ingenuity was to ensure that the vehicle kept teaching us new things about flight on Mars, right up to the end. If the choice ever became stand down or keep pushing, the team wanted to keep pushing. And that’s exactly what happened. After more than 70 flights, we encountered a technical challenge that was simply beyond Ingenuity’s capabilities. The helicopter’s visual navigation system couldn’t distinguish the features of a very monotonous landscape well enough to consistently track them. Lacking that information, the vehicle essentially became confused about where it was and where it was going. As it descended, it may have begun to chase its own shadow. At some point during the flight and landing, Ingenuity sustained significant damage to its rotor blades and yet, somewhat miraculously, it survived that landing and came to rest upright on the Martian surface. Ingenuity is still alive and sending home data from its onboard systems—something it may continue to do for years to come. Perhaps if the Perseverance rover drives back by Valinor Hills Station (Ingenuity’s final airfield, named for Tolkien’s Undying Lands), Ingenuity will be able to phone home again and relay years’ worth of weather data to scientists on Earth. But unfortunately, it will never fly again. Seventy-two flights. More than two hours of flying time. Over 1,000 sols after arriving on Mars. Eleven miles (17.7 kilometers) covered. All this from a helicopter that weathered rocket launch loads, Martian dust storms, and more without a single opportunity for in-person inspection or servicing—something you’d never expect of a helicopter here on Earth. Ingenuity gave us everything we asked for and more. True to its spirit and its mission, even Ingenuity’s final flights have made us smarter. There’s more yet to learn, but from what I’ve seen, I believe the challenge that grounded Ingenuity will be relatively easy to overcome with future Mars helicopters, thanks to what we’ve now learned. Yes, Ingenuity reached a limit; but that limit can and will be conquered. Flight 72 marked an end, but not the end. The true conclusion of the Ingenuity mission will come when its hard-earned lessons are next put into practice by another Mars helicopter, one that will be even more ingenuous than its predecessor, thanks to how much wiser we are after 72 flights. AeroVironment has continued to invest funds and time into dreaming up new capabilities for future Mars helicopters. Engineers at AeroVironment, JPL, and NASA Ames are now thinking about helicopters and other aerial vehicles that could someday carry scientific instruments, fetch sample tubes, or explore difficult to access locations such as valleys and lava tubes. Additionally, elsewhere in the world, others are following Ingenuity’s lead. In 2021, China announced its plans to fly a helicopter on Mars, and more recently, India has revealed more about its plan to fly a Martian helicopter with a variety of weather and atmospheric sensors within the next eight years. With a growing community of international space agencies interested in the exploration of the Red Planet, helicopters may become an affordable and attractive option for space discovery and diplomacy. I believe the impactful legacy of Ingenuity will do for aerial mobility on Mars what Sojourner did for ground mobility. When the Ingenuity mission began, NASA’s leaders often compared it to the Wright Brothers 1903 Flyer—and indeed, Ingenuity carried a small piece of fabric from that historic aircraft to Mars. Now that the Martian equivalent of the Kitty Hawk flight has occurred, the successors to Orville and Wilbur at NASA JPL and AeroVironment are itching to embark on the next great endeavor that will forever change the future of planetary exploration. Planetary exploration helicopters have made their impact and are here to stay, and those in government, academia, and industry who embrace and support the inclusion of these systems in future missions will surely reap the benefits. Another novel forebearer of Ingenuity is Sojourner, the first successful Mars rover. Like Ingenuity, Sojourner was the lighter, smaller vehicle that hitched a ride with another mission to the Red Planet. Both programs had small budgets but delivered huge results. I believe the impactful legacy of Ingenuity will do for aerial mobility on Mars what Sojourner did for ground mobility: leave such an impactful legacy that at every future Martian launch window, and with every future call for proposals, this new form of exploration demonstrated by Ingenuity is considered a critical enabling technology for future discovery. As Ingenuity’s flying campaign comes to an end, and as the era of aerial Mars exploration begins in earnest, my hat is off to the people who made this possible, including brilliant NASA and JPL colleagues like Bob Balaram, Charles Elachi, Mimi Aung, Robert Hogg, Bobby Braun, Theodore (Teddy) Tzanetos, Håvard Grip, and more, and AeroVironment colleagues Matt Keennon, Benjamin Pipenberg, Sara Langberg, Jeremy Tyler, Joey Beckman, and more. Humanity’s best machines reflect the care, cleverness, and curiosity of their makers—and with Ingenuity, each of you has proven to be truly world-class. Ingenuity A mosaic shows the final resting place of Ingenuity (right) as well as one of rotor blades. [larger version] (credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/LANL/CNES/CNRS) Will Pomerantz is an aerospace executive with two decades of experience in the entrepreneurial and non-profit sectors. He currently serves as the Head of Space Ventures at AeroVironment. He is also the co-founder of the Brooke Owens Fellowship and the Patti Grace Smith Fellowship, two award-winning mentorship and work experience programs focused on enabling more undergraduates to pursue successful aerospace careers.

Tintin The First Man In Space

Tintin, the first man in space and on the Moon by Anusuya Datta Monday, April 22, 2024 Bookmark and Share April 12 is a historic day for the space industry. On this day back in 1961, Russian cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin became the first human in space. Not to be left behind, the United States sent its first man into space in less than a month—Alan Shepard on May 5—thus sparking the famous space race between the two Cold War superpowers. December 1968 saw the launch of Apollo 8, the first manned space mission to orbit the Moon, and about seven months later Americans Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin made the historic Moon landing on July 20, 1969. But everyone knows all this, and that’s not the story. What many don’t know is that super hack Tintin was way ahead of both the superpowers in flying to space as well as landing on Moon. Yes, we are talking about the Belgian boy with a tuft of ginger hair. But how did Hergé anticipate the lunar adventure with such precision, especially coming so many years ahead of an actual man in space, let alone a Moon landing? For the uninitiated, Belgian cartoonist Georges Remi, popularly known as Hergé, created the iconic character Tintin, whose adventures have captivated readers all over the world for the past 80 years. The series stands as one of the most beloved European comics of the 20th century, translated into more than 50 languages and selling over 200 million copies worldwide, and even inspiring a film adaptation by Steven Spielberg and Peter Jackson. Hergé’s Explorers on the Moon was published in Le Journal Tintin in 1950. This first part was retitled as Destination Moon and published in 1953, followed by Explorers on the Moon in 1954. So technically, Tintin made the Moon landing in 1950, 19 years before Armstrong. Who would have imagined reading the book in 1950—when Tintin exclaims after taking a few steps on lunar surface, “I have taken a few steps. For the first time certainly in the history of mankind, there is an explorer on the Moon!”—that another man would utter almost similar words 19 years later: “That’s one small step for (a) man, one giant leap for mankind”? And this time for real! Tintin But how did Hergé anticipate the lunar adventure with such precision, especially coming so many years ahead of an actual man in space, let alone a Moon landing? The Tintin Moon adventure has been widely acclaimed by critics for its exceptional attention to technical detail, with many hailing it as a masterpiece for its uncannily accurate portrayal of lunar landscapes and space exploration. It’s intriguing that, unlike Hergé’s earlier works, the Moon series, in his own words, didn’t have any “moonmen, monsters, or incredible surprises.” That way it’s fascinating how a renowned children’s comic book author would transition to science fiction while maintaining a fervent commitment to realism and accuracy. For his tale on the lunar adventure to be a success, Hergé understood it was crucial to ground the space journey in scientific fact. Some believe Hergé's foray into science fiction could have been prompted by his friendly competition with colleague Edgar P. Jacobs, who introduced his own science fiction comic, The Secret of the Swordfish, in 1950. Beyond this rivalry, Hergé is also believed to have drawn inspiration from Jules Verne's 1870 novel Around the Moon and the 1950 American film Destination Moon. For his tale on the lunar adventure to be a success, Hergé understood it was crucial to ground the space journey in scientific fact. He carefully eliminated anything fanciful or unrealistic from the script and conducted extensive research on rockets and space travel. He is said to have received help from his friend Bernard Heuvelmans, author of the non-fiction work L’Homme parmi les étoiles (Man Among the Stars). Additionally, he initiated correspondence with Alexander Ananoff, author of L’Astronautique, a book on space travel. During this period, Hergé also visited the Center for Atomic Research at the Ateliers de Constructions Electriques de Charleroi. Notably, he commissioned the construction of a small rocket model, which he presented to Ananoff for validation of its realism as a representation of a moon rocket. Subsequently, Hergé utilized this model for precise sketches when producing the comic. Naturally, all this research showed up in the final product. The computer system at the Sprodj Space center in the made-up country of Syldavia looked a lot like UNIVAC I, the first commercially produced general-purpose electronic digital computer designed for business applications in the United States. Tintin's Moon rocket seemed to have been inspired by the V-2 rocket, the first long-range missile made by the Germans during World War II. It’s hard to miss the similarity between the red-and-white checkered pattern on Hergé’s rocket and the black-and-white pattern on V-2. Tintin The resemblance between the red-and-white checkered pattern adorning Hergé’s rocket and the black-and-white design of the V-2 rocket is unmistakable. In both books, Hergé seamlessly integrates elements of real science, infusing the adventures with a sense of authenticity. From the meticulously detailed space suits to the innovative use of atomic motors and rocket thrusters for navigation, the description of space exploration in the book reflects a deep respect for scientific principles. Tintin The portrayal of weightlessness in space, along with the humorous inclusion of whiskey bubbles, adds a sense of fun to the story while maintaining its realism. Tintin Who would have thought about the concept of viewing Earth as a 3D sphere more than 50 years before Google Earth! Hergé even goes as far as to suggest that water exists under the Moon’s surface. Till a few years ago, you would have laughed it off as fiction. As pointed out by literary critic Jean-Marie Apostolidès in The Metamorphoses of Tintin, there was a notable departure from the conventional “good vs. evil” narrative seen in Hergé’s earlier works. Instead, a new theme emerged: the struggle between “truth and error” as the lunar adventure takes on a mystical quality guided by scientific principles. The Metamorphoses of Tintin is the English translation of the first critical examination of the iconic Tintin cartoons where Apostolidès delved into character evolution and unveiled the cohesive vision underlying Hergé’s masterpiece. There was a notable departure from the conventional “good vs. evil” narrative seen in Hergé’s earlier works. Instead, a new theme emerged: the struggle between “truth and error”. Adding to the delight throughout the lunar adventure is Hergé’s signature humor, infusing the narratives with wit and charm, while his creation of lovable and awe-inspiring characters further enriches the storytelling experience. Destination Moon and Explorers on the Moon are not only masterpieces in storytelling but also serve as valuable lessons in the art of balancing serious themes with lighthearted comedy. Despite its Belgian origins, the Tintin series has garnered immense popularity and recognition worldwide, transcending cultural barriers, captivating readers from diverse backgrounds. The series has sparked imaginations across generations, instilling a sense of wonder and excitement for the unknown. Tintin and his friends (including the snow-white Snowy) were as inspiring for our generation, and perhaps the one before that, till Harry Potter came in. After all, the boy with a tuft of ginger hair who “always did the right thing”, had gone, to borrow the Star Trek line, “where no man had gone before”. [This article was earlier published on the author’s Medium account.] Anusuya Datta is a writer/journalist with a keen interest in Earth observation and sustainability issues. She is also part of the EO4SDG board and has delivered guest lectures at the University of British Columbia’s school of journalism on using satellite imagery in storytelling.

Book Review: "Still As Bright"

book cover Review: Still As Bright by Jeff Foust Monday, April 22, 2024 Bookmark and Share Still As Bright: An Illuminating History of the Moon, from Antiquity to Tomorrow by Christopher Cokinos Pegasus Books, 2024 hardcover, 448 pp., illus. ISBN 978-1-63936-569-2 US$35 Early in his new book Still As Bright, Christopher Cokinos writes that, like so many boys in the early Space Age, he dreamed of becoming an astronaut after first becoming an Air Force pilot, even joining the Civil Air Patrol. “To this day, I remember Miss Hawk literally pulling me out of advanced algebra, though I don’t know why,” he writes, “and by the next class I was in remedial math, resigned, overnight, to never having wings pinned on a uniform.” This book is, on one level, a history of our studies of the Moon, as its subtitle suggests, but interwoven in those chapters is the author’s own experiences related to the Moon. He instead became a writer and English professor (including essays published here) but with an interest in the night sky, and specifically the Moon, that continued through his adult life. “The Moon is a provocation for culture, art, and science,” he writes in the prologue of the book, an examination of the Moon and our relationship with it, as our interest in exploring and perhaps one day living on it grows. It is similar in its themes, but different in approach, to Rebecca Boyle’s Our Moon (see “Review: Our Moon”, The Space Review, April 1, 2024) published earlier this year This book is, on one level, a history of our studies of the Moon, as its subtitle suggests. He explores various aspects of our changing understanding of the Moon over the centuries, from efforts centuries ago to map the lunar surface and name its features to the Apollo missions that walked on that surface. He explores in detail some specific topics, like the study of, and controversy surrounding, transient lunar phenomena that could be evidence of ongoing lunar activity—if such phenomena exist—as well as the special attention that the Apollo 15 crew gave to their geologic training ahead of their mission, which paid off for the astronauts and the scientists alike. Interwoven in those chapters is the author’s own experiences related to the Moon, from childhood to the present day; a memoir of sorts. Much of that revolves around observing the Moon, from childhood attempts using a small telescope called a Space Conqueror (a copy of which he finds in a thrift store decades later and restores) to larger telescopes he owns. Late in the book, he visits Mt. Wilson and observes the Moon through the 60-inch telescope there. The thrill of seeing the Moon up close comes though those pages. Still As Bright and Our Moon are complementary to each other, taking different approaches to exploring the Moon and humanity’s relationship with it, as well as the authors’ own perspectives. Those perspectives are continuing to evolve. While Cokinos gave up on his dreams of becoming an astronaut in school, last month he commanded a lunar mission of sorts: a six-day analog lunar mission organized by the University of Arizona in a habitat at Biosphere 2, part of a crew that included a poet, textile artist, and dancer/choreographer. Asked afterwards if he would be willing to go to the Moon, he responded, “I would do it in a heartbeat.” Jeff Foust (jeff@thespacereview.com) is the editor and publisher of The Space Review, and a senior staff writer with SpaceNews. He also operates the Spacetoday.net web site. Views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author alone.

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