NASA Donates Aerial Prototype of Ingenuity Mars Helicopter to Smithsonian Museum

NASA made a significant donation to the Smithsonian Museum. The U.S. Space Agency gave the latter the full-scale prototype of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter.

NASA Donates Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Prototype To Smithsonian Museum

On Friday (Dec. 15), representatives from NASA and the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum celebrated the agency's transfer of the aerial prototype for Ingenuity into the museum's collection at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia. The full-scale prototype was the first to show that an aircraft could fly in the atmosphere of another planet. It was tested at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California,

Following the prototype's first successful autonomous flight in a Martian simulation, NASA felt secure enough to declare that Ingenuity would be sent to Mars. On Feb. 18, 2021, the helicopter and its accompanying Perseverance rover touched down in the Jezero Crater.

According to Matt Shindell, curator of planetary science and exploration at the National Air and Space Museum, Having the prototype was at the top of his wish list since he heard that Ingenuity was flying along with Perseverance. At some point, he wished to incorporate something from the development of the Mars Helicopter into the museum. He wanted something that would speak to the process of the new technology's creation and symbolize it in displays.

The prototype flew within JPL's Space Simulator on May 31, 2016, a vacuum container measuring 25 feet wide by 7.6 meters. By initially clearing the chamber of all air and then adding a small amount of carbon dioxide to backfill it, the atmosphere of Mars was replicated. Although the prototype's construction was different in some major aspects, it was designed to be the same size as the rotorcraft flown to Mars.

The prototype of Ingenuity will start receiving conservation and care while it is still in flight, allowing the Smithsonian to preserve and exhibit it for many years to come. The location of the display in the National Air and Space Museum is still up in the air.

"What gets sent to Mars, except in rare instances, doesn't come back to us," said Shindell. "So what we tend to end up collecting are the prototypes and the engineering models, the things that are developed along the way to a successful spacecraft mission and then allow the engineers to solve problems and develop the technology as they go."

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Ingenuity Inspires New Deployable Quadcopter

Ingenuity has inspired another helicopter design for Mars exploration. Scientists from China developed a coaxial design extraterrestrial helicopter for its Mars sample return mission in the future.

Researchers at China's Harbin Institute of Technology propose using a quadcopter for Martian operations as an alternative to Ingenuity's coaxial architecture. The team claims that the four rotors of the MarsBird-VII helicopter will allow it to carry up to 100g of Martian rock to a neighboring lander.

It is specifically made to work in the hostile Martian atmosphere. MarsBird-VII could recover geological materials weighing up to 100 grams for analysis since it would have four rotors instead of NASA's Ingenuity helicopter's coaxial rotors. The exceptional quadcopter would gather clean regolith with care and deliver it to a stationary lander.