Also, this makes Mars the second planet that uses Linux more than Windows as noted by the tweet in the linux below. :-)
https://www.theverge.com/2021/2/19/22291324/linux-perseveran...
Some info from Wikipedia:
> The rover's computer uses the BAE Systems RAD750 radiation-hardened single board computer based on a ruggedized PowerPC G3 microprocessor (PowerPC 750). The computer contains 128 megabytes of volatile DRAM, and runs at 133 MHz. The flight software runs on the VxWorks operating system, is written in C and is able to access 4 gigabytes of NAND non-volatile memory on a separate card.
Wow, such a great testament to The Unix Philosophy of building small, modular, focused tools that can be combined together to do all sorts of interesting and more complex tasks. I'm sure no one imagined using these utilities from a helicopter to retrieve rover logs to aid in diagnostics, but here we are. What a cool story.
If you're remembering correctly, then I'm misremembering in that this has essentially a Snapdragon chip and not a rad hardened CPU at all
(I'm kidding, the badging system is funny)
It does bode well for sending cheaper "nice to have" experiments on missions, though.
NASA absolutely does have some incentive to find savings in control hardware and software.
Finally, while Ingenuity does use a non-hardened Snapdragon, many other of its critical electronics components are still rad-hardened. The FPGA and dual MCUs (that actually do the low level control and I/O I assume) are both rad hardened. In addition, the COTS components that were used where screened by NASA for their performance in radiation.
The Snapdragon is really just there to control the radio, and do image processing. Critically, these are functions that have -some leeway- for timing, giving the option to just restart the Snapdragon if a watch dog detects a problem.
All of this to say is that rad-hardening isn't going away, but will probably stick around in many critical niches. What Ingenuity absolutely do is validate that modern COTS processors have a role to play in radiation elevated environments, including in semi-critical applications.
edit: from another comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=39081718
It looks like it's just a couple of (important) components that can handle the quirks of not being radiation-hardened, but it's still significant.
> He got a quote back for $120,000. “Elon laughed,” Davis said. “He said, 'That part is no more complicated than a garage door opener. Your budget is five thousand dollars. Go make it work.’”
So while "strictly speaking" they planned for three 90 second flights. There was the unstated assumption that it'd be used for much more than that as long as it actually worked effectively.
Or maybe have a helicopter that can move the rover with the equipment to different locations.
https://ieeexplore.ieee.org/abstract/document/9843501
In short, future designs target ~30kg heli, 5kg payloads. Other designs by collaborators are closer to 20kg. It's probably possible to transport a few of these on the existing lander technology, which would be awesome.
The scholar.google.com keywords you want are "Mars Science Helicopter" and a good touchpoint author is T. Tzanetos or S. Withrow-Maser
Actually it could be like 50 of them. Plus some ground robots to put together solar farm. And wooh... we get the first extra terrestrial permanent base
Not sure if Nasa has said yet which roles they see for future Mars helicopters. The initial idea behind Ingenuity was to use them as scouting vehicles for rovers. Of course rovers improved a lot too, with better autonomous driving. But with a Mars rover driving about 100 meters/yards per day scouting helicopters are still useful.
Maybe we will also see Helicopters carrying more instruments themselves. But I imagine in the beginning that's mostly better imaging instruments. Weight is still an issue for flying things, no matter the planet. But maybe we will see some future missions that instead of a car-sized rover and one tiny helicopter have a fleet of helicopters with a small support-rover for exploring wider areas.
But yeah having more helicopters might be feasible - for surveying the surface.
(Listed as 4 pounds on this official fact sheet) https://mars.nasa.gov/files/mars2020/MarsHelicopterIngenuity...
I’m not an aeronautical engineer, so I guess what I’m asking is if there is some problem scaling up flying machines in an extremely thin atmosphere?
(Of course, all of NASA's long-term plans for Mars would be completely disrupted if Starship lowers the cost-per-kg of delivering equipment by two orders of magnitude, which arguably is likely.)
Even the combo is probably too much complexity. A heli with good imagers, spectrometers, and the ability to cart soil samples would be fantastic.
Titan is such a wonderful place for a nuclear powered helicopter. Much better than rover/submarines/floaters, IMHO. A balloon would also have been excellent, but the extra mobility from helis is going to be amazing.
IMO NASA wanted to try to deal with the sort of 'oh boy... another rover' fatigue and saw the drone as a way to spice things up with some passable science arguments behind it, and a relatively minimal cost. Further supporting this is that the helicopter wasn't an initial part of the plan - it was strapped on at the 'last minute', speaking in government time. In any case, I would comfortably wager against us seeing more drones in future missions, at least to Mars.
Does it? I thought the helicopter was just solar powered.
I should add though that the prospects of the parasites in Congress properly funding such a complex mission seem pretty low for now.
I heard this line in my mind with Professor Fansworth's voice.