NASA's Perseverance Mars rover launched in July 2020, carrying the first helicopter to the surface of Mars! This helicopter has to be lightweight and have large blades to fly on Mars. These large blades rotate so quickly that they generate enough lift to overcome the gravity of the Red Planet and lift off the ground.
In this project, students will build a paper helicopter. Then, just as NASA engineers had to try out different versions of the Mars helicopter before coming up with a final design, students will experiment with the design of their helicopters to see what works best.
Plain paper OR a copy of the template – Download PDF
(Optional) 3-meter (10-foot) length of lightweight ribbon or smartphone camera
Have extra copies of the template or blank paper ready so students can make multiple helicopters.
In July 2020, NASA launched the Perseverance rover to Mars. Traveling along with Perseverance is Ingenuity, the first helicopter designed to fly on Mars. A small autonomous aircraft, Ingenuity is designed to perform the first tests of powered flight on another world. In the months after Perseverance lands, the helicopter will be lowered from the rover's belly onto the surface of Mars to test powered flight in the planet's thin atmosphere.
Ingenuity will perform a series of test flights over a 30-Martian-day window that will begin sometime in the spring of 2021. (A Martian day, or sol, is 24 hours and 37 minutes.) For its first flight, Ingenuity will hover a few feet above the ground for about 20 to 30 seconds and land. That alone will be a major achievement: the very first powered flight in the extremely thin atmosphere of Mars! After that, the team will attempt additional experimental flights over a farther distance and at a greater altitude. Ingenuity’s performance during these experimental flights will help inform decisions about the future use of small helicopters for Mars exploration. Future Mars helicopters could serve as robotic scouts, surveying terrain from above, or they could function as stand-alone science craft carrying instrument payloads.
Learn how JPL engineers built a helicopter that could make the first powered flight on Mars. | Watch on YouTube
Designing a helicopter to fly on Mars was no small task. The Mars atmosphere is only 1% the density of Earth’s atmosphere, so generating enough lift to overcome the gravity of Mars is a challenge. The helicopter had to be lightweight with extremely fast rotors to be able to generate enough lift. Though a full outdoor test couldn't be done on Earth, engineers were able to simulate conditions on Mars inside a test chamber at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. To do this, they offset Earth's gravity by attaching tethers to the helicopter that support about 62% of its weight. Then, they performed flight tests inside a vacuum chamber that pumped out approximately 99% of the air, leaving a very thin atmosphere. Months of design, testing, redesign, and retesting went into the development of the Ingenuity Mars helicopter. Though engineers came up with their best design and it worked well inside the test chamber, the real test is yet to come once the Perseverance rover lands on the surface of Mars, delivering Ingenuity to its new test environment.
In this activity, your students will experiment with simple paper helicopter designs, engaging in the engineering design process that NASA engineers use every day.
NASA's Mars Helicopter, Ingenuity, arrives at Mars on Feb. 18, 2021. Its mission: to demonstrate the first powered flight on another planet. Taking to the Martian skies in Spring 2021. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech | › Video details
Footage of tests of the Ingenuity Mars helicopter at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech | Watch on YouTube
Cut out the helicopter. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech | + Expand image
Fold along the solid lines. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech | + Expand image
Test flight. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech | + Expand image
Comparing resistance. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech | + Expand image
Counting rotations. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech | + Expand image
Create a video game that lets players explore the Red Planet with a helicopter like the one going to Mars with NASA's Perseverance rover! Type Project Subject Technology
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