JPL's Plan for the Next Mars Helicopter

Re:JPL's Plan for the Next Mars Helicopter by akiselev on Wednesday August 11, 2021 @12:11AM (#28137940)

Ooof that's hard to swallow :(. Would the MSH be so productive that it makes up for the limited operating time? Is mission planning so meticulous that it would be a bottle neck anyway? What about winter?

Whats the power budget for instruments during/after flight?

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Re:JPL's Plan for the Next Mars Helicopter by minitoar on Wednesday August 11, 2021 @12:57AM (#28138182)

For reference the rovers can do 100 meters a day. 10km in one day is huge.

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Re:JPL's Plan for the Next Mars Helicopter by XorNot on Wednesday August 11, 2021 @01:39AM (#28138425)

Yeah I was going to post this too: the range of a helicopter like that is massive. Well into the "find an interesting feature and follow it" range.

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Re:JPL's Plan for the Next Mars Helicopter by BotJunkie on Wednesday August 11, 2021 @12:55AM (#28138172)

This is all the next step. If they end up putting together an actual mission proposal, they can factor in power budgets for specific science instruments, sun angles and seasonality at the landing site, etc, but they're not quite there yet.

Not sure what you mean by limited operating time, though- if you mean that MSH has to spend 50% of its time charging, that's true, but relative to a rover, it can travel so much farther and faster that JPL is arguing it more than makes up for it.

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