August 19 is Orville Wright’s Birthday and it’s National Aviation Day. That probably doesn’t have quite the ring to it that Independence Day does, or Memorial Day, but still being here in the Outer Banks where Wilbur and Orville Wright first flew, there’s always something interesting on tap.
This year it was fascinating.
Dr. Bob Balaram, who until recently was the chief engineer for the Mars Ingenuity Helicopter project was on hand to compare what NASA had to do to fly a helicopter on Mars and what the Wright Brothers were faced with.
As it turns out, the comparison was more apt than would be thought was the case at first.
The Ingenuity helicopter accompanied the Mars Rover Perseverance to the red planet in its 2020 mission. The Ingenuity was originally thought of as a technological add on—knowing whether or not it was possible to build something that would fly on Mars was important, but the real mission was to gather samples of Martian soil.
As it turns out, Ingenuity has been an integral part of the success of the mission.
But figuring out how to build the first aircraft that would fly on Mars had some incredible challenges.
One of the first things the design team discovered was that the Martian atmosphere, which is 1% as dense as Earth’s, meant the rotors for their helicopter had to be designed to Mars standard. And to do that they needed a wind tunnel. Except not existed that could meet their needs. So…a lot like the Wright Brothers, they had to build their own wind tunnel.
There were a number of other comparisons the Dr. Balaram was able to show between the first flight on the planet earth and the first on Mars. It made for a fascinating day.
Interestingly the Ingenuity was only supposed to fly for a month. It’s still going and because of it’s camera—which is really just a cellphone camera—mission control for Perseverance is able to get high resolution photos of the terrain and send the information to the rover..
There always seems to be something fascinating happening on the Outer Banks. Stop by and see for yourself and be sure to enjoy your stay in a Brindley Beach Vacations home.