Mars Perseverance Rover - A Look at the Mars Ingenuity Helicopter
Blades Ingenuity’s 2-foot-long blades are specially designed for the Martian atmosphere, which is 1 percent the density of Earth’s. “As the blades rotate, they tend to flap up and down a little bit, which interferes with control,” Balaram tells Popular Mechanics. “On Earth, [this motion] gets stamped out. On Mars, in the thin air, it doesn't get stamped out.” Grip, a research technologist also at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, likens the unsteady motion to riding a bicycle with heavy grocery bags hanging from the handle bars. To counteract the wobble and make the flight smo...
Source: popularmechanics.com