Ingenuity will have been the very first. But there will undoubtedly be others. Helicopters in the skies of Mars. And they just might… illuminate the Martian atmosphere with a purple glow.
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[EN VIDÉO] Ingenuity’s historic flight to Mars Monday, April 19, 2021 will be remembered as the day when Ingenuity, a motorized and controlled craft, flew into the atmosphere of a planet other than our Earth for the very first time. Mars. And this video taken by the Perseverance rover, posted some 65 meters away, immortalized the moment. We discover NASA’s Martian helicopter rising about 3 meters above the ground of the red planet before landing about thirty seconds later. © NASA, JPL-Caltech, ASU, MSSS
A St. Elmo’s light is a glow that can appear at the top of a boat’s mast or at the ends of wings of an airplane. When a electric field strong enough causes a discharge into the air. And some NASA researchers tell us that the phenomenon could also occur on Mars. Around the whirling blades of helicopters who will soon be brought to fly above the ground of the Red Planet. This could even be the case for Ingenuity, already there. But for that he would have to fly at night.
” The electric currents generated by the drones’ fast-spinning blades are too weak to pose a threat to the craft or to the Martian environment, but they offer the opportunity to improve our understanding of triboelectric effects – like those who make our hair stand on end after rubbing it on a balloon »says William Farrell, lead author of the study, in a NASA press release.
A purple glow in the models
Based on modeling computers and what happens on Earth around the blades of a helicopter, the researchers explain that as they spin, the blades of future martian drones will come up against tiny specks of dust. A charge will then be transferred, accumulating on the blades and creating an electric field. As the load reaches high levels, theatmosphere will begin to conduct electricity, creating a population ofelectrons and an electric current to dissipate or compensate for the charge buildup on the helicopter.
Although the researchers imagine that the currents generated in this way will be small, they could be large enough to cause the air around the blades and other parts of the helicopters to light up with a Violet colour. This is what their theory predicts. But nature sometimes thwarts our plans. We will therefore have to wait for the flight of new helicopters in the Martian sky to be sure.
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