Imagine that you are flying your drone on a planet 180 million kilometres away. It takes 20 minutes for your command to reach the planet – and the pictures you see of what is happening are 20 minutes old. You cannot take evasive or corrective action if anything goes wrong, it would take too late. This is the type of situation that the NASA's engineers did not wish to experience on the first flight of the "Ingenuity" helicopter on Mars on April 19.

Ingenious fly

All the planning and calculations paid off. Just after 12 pm British Summer Time, a NASA engineer announced to mission control that “all data sets are nominal”. This, of course, is space-talk for: “We are incredibly happy, everything has gone well”. A few minutes later, the data - a rather unprepossessing graph. But it was sufficient for the engineers in mission control to clap and cheer.

The Success🎉🎉

Even though gravity of Mars is 1/3rd of Earth's which helped to offset the effect of the much lower atmospheric pressure (about 6 mbar). But even so, Ingenuity’s blades had to rotate at 2400 RPM (compared to 500 RPM on Earth) to provide the required lift for the 2 kg craft. Just achieving such a rapid spin rate for the two 1 m long blades was a significant advance in propulsion technology.

Engineering marvel

Ingenuity does not have the rear rotor blades of a conventional helicopter for “steering” – and, as mentioned, commands cannot be given in real-time. Each flight will be as nail-biting as the first.

What Ingenuity can't do !

Ingenuity apparently carried on board <a href="https://www.space.com/mars-helicopter-ingenuity-wright-brothers-plane" rel="noopener noreferrer" target="_blank">a small piece of canvas </a>from the Wright brothers’ aeroplane, the Wright Flyer. It was, clearly, an excellent token for success for the little spacecraft.

Rise of Rotor Blades

The maiden flight of Mars helicopter was a significant advance in propulsion technology.

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How NASA flew a helicopter on Mars

- The closest star to Earth is Proxima Centauri. It is about 4.25 light-years away or about 25 trillion miles (40 trillion km). The fastest-ever spacecraft, the now- in-space <a href="https://blogs.nasa.gov/parkersolarprobe/2018/10/29/parker-solar-probe-becomes-fastest-ever-spacecraft/">Parker Solar Probe </a>will reach a top speed of 450,000 mph. It would take just 20 seconds to go from Los Angeles to New York City at that speed, but it would take the solar probe about 6,633 years to reach Earth’s nearest neighbouring solar system.

Introduction with neighbours

Physicists’ current understanding of spacetime comes from Albert Einstein’s <a href="https://www.space.com/17661-theory-general-relativity.html">theory of General Relativity </a>. General Relativity states that space and time are fused and that nothing can travel faster than the speed of light. General relativity also describes how mass and energy warp spacetime – hefty objects like stars and black holes curve spacetime around them.

Understanding time warp

In 1994, Miguel Alcubierre, a Mexican theoretical physicist, showed that compressing spacetime in front of the spaceship while expanding it behind was <a href="https://doi.org/10.1088/0264-9381/11/5/001">mathematically possible within the laws of General Relativity </a>. So, what does that mean?

Feasibility study

Two recent papers – one by <a href="https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6382/abdf6e">Alexey Bobrick and Gianni Martire </a>and another by <a href="https://doi.org/10.1088/1361-6382/abe692">Erik Lentz </a>– provide solutions that seem to bring warp drives closer to reality.Bobrick and Martire realised that by modifying spacetime within the bubble in a certain way, they could remove the need to use negative energy. This solution, though, does not produce a warp drive that can go faster than light.

How NASA flew a helicopter on Mars

Faster-than-light space travel using warp drive from ‘Star Trek’ is now theoretically possible

Himanshu Saxena