The flight model helicopter has flown in the simulation chamber! https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?release=2019-052

No more test flights until Mars, it looks like....

I thought that a drone is better than an helicopter due to its greater stability and maneuverability flight. Hope that the flight model also includes the flight control to Martian sand storms and air swirls.

About the navigation control, what instrument is using in order to avoid any geology obstacle.

Finally, it's is important that the helicopter has own recover method after a soft landing accident. Nobody will help it to put on the line but the Rover's arm must be capable to arrange it .

If by "drone" you mean a multirotor of some kind, these are not as stable if a motor fails than the two-rotor coaxial configuration of this vehicle, nor as power-efficient.

I presume there's a camera for whatever hazard avoidance and autonomy the helicopter has.

Finally, there are no plans to do anything with the arm. If the helicopter lands badly, that's the end of its mission. It does have fairly wide-stance, high-clearance landing gear to protect against tipovers and bad landings.

Thanks, Mcaplinger!

Anyway, it is a very challenging engineering project! It is pioneering technology, and after a successful mission, it will form the foundation for more capable helicopters for more ambitious future purposes such as to carry small sample caches back to a Mars ascent vehicle for the return to Earth.

The MHS must overcome many obstacles to meet the Martian weather (cold and vast temperature variation, high radiations, winds) and carrying many technologies, using a cellular microprocessor -Snapdragon- for photography, navigation orientation (no magnetic but depends to Sun tracker a camera coupled with to the JPL's visual inertial navigation system along with some additional inputs that might include gyros, visual odometry, tilt sensors, altimeter, and hazard detectors. The solar panels, I suspect, will be on the top of a helix and will carry Sony Li-ion batteries which will provide up to 220 W of energy.

Hope for a success laboratory! The helicopter can fly in Titan, Venus (I don't think it is feasible for such high temperature), and what else planet or moon the MHS can fly?

Now you can send all 0.000000075 meters of your name to Mars. article on Nasa.gov
quite a turnout already, looks like im earning 313,586,649 miles

I was at a talk at the Vertical Lift Society (formerly American Helicopter Society) last week, where the speaker (from Aerovironment) noted that about 60% of the MHS battery energy is expended keeping the vehicle warm overnight on Mars.

On Titan, such a small vehicle would quickly freeze, and there is very little sunlight to drive the solar panel. Dragonfly relies on the 'waste' heat from an MMRTG to stay warm, as well as its electrical power to charge the battery for flight.

Any news on how / when the rover will be getting it's name? I haven't seen anything since the press release that PaulH51 mentioned earlier in this thread, either. I've made some vector versions of the original JPL insignia, the grey-and-white JPL insignia, and the NASA insignia for Mars 2020, if anybody's interested!

Good question. The selected organization was supposed to conduct a contest during the 2019 spring academic semester and submit the top 25 names to NASA by 31 July 2019, but given that that semester is nearly over and the selected organization hasn't even been announced AFAIK, it seems like this is behind schedule.

https://nspires.nasaprs.com/external/viewre...6K%20Amend1.pdf

An email sent to the get info email for the solicitation returns an automated response indicating that the contest will "likely begin in the summer/fall of 2019." I don't know who was selected.

"NASA's Mars 2020 Gets HD Eyes" -- Mastcam-Z cameras installed on the remote sensing mast: https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=7414

Whoever wrote this managed to not mention the company that actually built the cameras.

A few more tidbits are in this December 2018 article: http://www.marsdaily.com/reports/Mars_2020...at_ASU_999.html, such as 2 megapixel resolution.

Today SuperCam leaves Toulouse for Los Angeles.

The electronics for MCZ are essentially identical to those of the MSL Mastcams, the major difference being that apart from the adjustable focal length, the optics fill the entire 1600x1200 active area of the sensor, rather than having vignetting at the corners which effectively reduces the area of the MSL Mastcams to something like 1400x1200.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-selects-p...st-seeks-judges

https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/participate/name-the-rover/

A rather nice image of the 2020 Helicopter being installed on the rover's belly pan. Details in this news release
Click to view attachment

Article on getting Mars 2020 center of gravity balanced Link

I'm a bit surprised that it took attaching 44 pounds of tungsten weights. I assume these weight are permanent as they are to balance the craft for reentry etc. There are a lot of interesting instrument that weigh much less than 44 pounds that scientist would love to add to the rover.

I assume in the design of the rover, parts are placed to try and get the center of gravity right. Maybe someone can explain why the position of components can't be re positioned slightly, but instead tungsten weight are added. On previous missions, I thought instruments or extra cameras were eliminated because 2 extra pounds broke the weight budget. 44 pounds seem like a huge number for fixing the center of gravity????

The ones used for Curiosity where ejected during EDL way before landing

There was this: NASA Announces Winning Ideas for Mars Balance Mass Challenge February 20, 2015

QUOTE

It looks like although there were winning ideas, they were not used this time around.

My basic (Wikipedia) understanding is that the masses are there to actually unbalance the craft so as it enters the Mars atmosphere it tilts to provide aerodynamic lift. Then before the path to the surface is to become more vertical, under parachute, the masses are ejected.

And the ground impact marks of the two large (75kg) masses were imaged ... The masses were ejected before EDL and were used as balance masses during the cruise phase. The image's description is quite interesting, including the cruise stage related information.
There were other six smaller (25kg) masses ejected at much lower altitude, during EDL, whose impacts were also imaged. These were used to offset the centre of gravity during descent.
See also https://static.uahirise.org/images/2012/det...BM-2H-scale.jpg
and Possible Impacts from MSL Hardware including the related closeup image

Fernando

I'm not quite sure how you can accurately measure the C of G without the MMRTG being installed or at least a dummy unit of the correct size / mass being used...

As I understand it - these balance masses are entirely unrelated to EDL. The two cruise balance masses on one side of the backshell, and entry balance masses on the opposite side are designed so the vehicle is balanced during the spin stabilized cruise, then unbalanced before entry to give it the angle of attack required for guided entry, and then rebalanced before parachute deployment. I believe these total something around 150kg ejected both before entry, then before 'chute deployment.

The rover's CoG also needs to be characterized as part of the whole stack of the vehicle. It needs to match a conservatively predicted mass and CoG so as not to throw the rest of the vehicle off. The mass properties of the RTG are well known - you can 'balance' the vehicle without it, knowing how it will change the properties. You are not literally 'balancing' the vehicle on a spin table like that - you're simply characterizing the CoG. This is where the analogy of balancing a tyre kind of falls apart..... on one of those machines you actually need to balance it right then and there.

As part of the amusingly-named "straighten up and fly right" (SUFR) maneuver. See https://trs.jpl.nasa.gov/bitstream/handle/2...629/10-1775.pdf

Thanks to all who responded for adding insight into mass balance issues. A very interesting topic as most space craft issues are.

Yeah - at one point they considered try to do it by pumping mercury around a fluid loop or something

...what could possibly go wrong there...?

The article refers to 9 separate weights, so they average about 5 pounds, not the same thing as being able to accommodate a 44-pound instrument. The large number of weights and the use of a spin table seems consistent with "dynamic balancing," which is more than simply adjusting the c.g. position. Dynamic balancing orients the principal axes of inertia to avoid wobble when rotating. The engineer quoted in the article likened it to tire balancing at a gas station, perfectly appropriate except that the procedure is now done at automotive tire shops, rarely at "gas stations" anymore.
Repositioning components would be complicated, considering many hard constraints on component locations, and presumably it would be taboo to drill new mounting holes in the frame at this late stage of assembly in the clean room. Adjustable mounting brackets for components could be an engineering nightmare, adding extra weight and the possibility of things shaking loose and changing position.
Thanks Floyd for posting the September 12 article, I was wondering why the rover has been absent from the regular clean room webcam view this past week. <https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/mission/where-is-the-rover/>

interesting quick read on the landing vision system on arsTechnica
i'd almost forgotten about this addition, more info

Huh. I wonder who built this camera? I haven't seen anything public about it anywhere.

I havent seen that either, although some interesting (if brief) details on p.7,8 of this pdf here

I'm curious: are there reasons to suspect that Jezero crater is more likely to preserve signs of ancient life (had it existed) compared to Gale crater?

I know that they're both ancient lake systems, with Jezero being an open lake system and Gale being a closed one. Does that or other differences influence biosignature preservation?

It's because of the delta within Jezero. More here: https://www.planetary.org/blogs/emily-lakda...2020-rover.html

Thanks! Great article.

Semifinalists of naming contest announced: https://www.futureengineers.org/nametherover

Nice to see that I was not alone in thinking Clarity would be an appropriate name.

agree, "Clarity" describes an aspect of the mission itself quite elegantly, even forcing in the required timely pun with minimum cringe factor.

However, if it gets named the other obvious 2020 pun i saw in the list: "Vision", then i am (gasp) having to wince down that road:
A worst case scenario for an unfortunate headline mangles the mind: "Mars 2020 Vision lost due to failure of descent imaging system"

I would have just gone with Curiosity 2

I see my choice, 'Uncertainty', didn't make the cut.

Phil

My daughter chose one of the semifinalist names, but her name and essay were not chosen among the listed semifinalists, so I guess that makes her a quarterfinalist.

"Promise" sounds (ahem) promising to me. I would have gone with "Discovery" but apparently no one suggested that.

I love the name Perseverance, and it was suggested twice. I like it not just for the reasons suggested for the name (although both essay submissions for it are still wonderful for naming it), but after Opportunity's final resting place in Perseverance Valley. It seems like it would be a fitting tribute to our beloved explorer and the perseverance that it had to keep exploring new places, no matter how hard it was to get to those places. Mars2020 will carry on that legacy.

Down to nine, vote now!

Endurance, Clarity, Courage, Ingenuity, Promise, Fortitude, Tenacity, Perseverance, Vision.

I see a theme. These are the determinaiads from geek mythology. They forgot Pluck, which is not a moon of Uranus.

My money is on Endurance, Ingenuity or Promise.

I was hoping Imagination would be on the list...

What stands out to me is the number of votes from Turkey and Romania. Its not simply a function of population when comparing large countries with robust space programs. Having never visited Turkey (#17) or Romania (#61), I may be out of the loop culturally, as i have no guess as to how the word of this gets out in other countries, but its a welcome sign suggesting enthusiasm for science may be much less a function of being a project stakeholder country than I had expected.

https://astrogeology.usgs.gov/news/nomencla...proved-for-mars

New names for features around the landing site:

Click to view attachment

Phil

At long last, the naming of names will be completed this coming Thursday.

Perseverance.

And Perseverance now has its own forum.