Now That's Ingenuity: First Aircraft Measurement of Winds on Another Planet

Now That's Ingenuity: First Aircraft Measurement of Winds on Another Planet
by Kerry Hensley AAS Nova News
Washington DC (SPX) Jan 23, 2025

Researchers have used an aircraft to measure the wind speed on Mars, marking the first time this method has been used on another planet. This groundbreaking measurement was made possible by the Ingenuity helicopter, which was active for nearly three years and spent, cumulatively, more than two hours in flight on the Red Planet.

In February 2021, Mars got two new inhabitants: the Perseverance rover and the Ingenuity helicopter, bundled together in NASA's Mars 2020 mission. Ingenuity made history by being the first aircraft to carry out a powered and controlled flight on another planet.

The mission showed that flight is possible in the rarefied Martian air - more than 100 times thinner than Earth's - and covered roughly 18 kilometers (11 miles) in total. Ingenuity, carrying no scientific instruments and weighing about as much as a Chihuahua, paved the way for future aircraft missions to other worlds, such as the highly scientifically capable, half-ton Dragonfly mission to Saturn's moon Titan.

Which Way the Martian Wind Blows

Now, almost exactly one year since its final flight, Ingenuity is still enabling more firsts. In a research article published this week, a team led by Brian Jackson (Boise State University) described how they used information from Ingenuity to measure the speed and direction of Mars's winds. Though Ingenuity did not carry any instruments capable of directly measuring the wind, the helicopter recorded its attitude, or orientation, as it flew.

Previously, Jackson had carried out field experiments on Earth with a small drone to show that wind parameters could be extracted from an aircraft's attitude data. Building on that proof-of-concept study, Jackson's team used models to understand how Ingenuity's attitude would change in response to winds of varying speed and direction. From this modeling, the team reconstructed the winds that battered the tiny helicopter as it flew at altitudes spanning 3 to 24 meters (10 to 79 feet).

Comparing Conditions

The team calculated wind speeds ranging from 4.1 to 24.3 meters per second (9 to 54 miles per hour; that's anywhere from a "gentle breeze" to a "strong gale," to use the earthly terms). Compared to meteorological models, the measured speeds tended to be higher than expected and the wind directions did not always match. These differences might reflect the influence of localized geological features, like craters and scarps that whip the wind in highly variable directions, that the models do not fully capture.

While the wind directions implied by the Ingenuity helicopter data generally agreed with measurements by the Perseverance rover, which measured the planet's surface weather at an altitude of 1.5 meters (5 feet), Ingenuity measured higher wind speeds. Jackson's team found it unlikely that the higher speeds measured at Ingenuity's higher altitude were the result of random fluctuations; instead, they proposed a physical explanation rooted in the aerodynamic conditions upwind of the rover and helicopter. This study highlights both the challenge and potential of measuring winds with an aircraft, and Jackson's team plans for future work to refine the method. Accurate measurements of wind speeds on Mars can help scientists investigate our neighboring planet's surface processes and dust transport, as well as help to plan safe entry, descent, and landing for future missions.

Research Report:Profiling Near-Surface Winds on Mars Using Attitude Data from Mars 2020 Ingenuity