March 2010 April 2010 May 2010 June 2010 July 2010
August 2010
September 2010 October 2010
November 2010
December 2010
January 2011
February 2011 March 2011 April 2011 May 2011 June 2011 July 2011 August 2011 September 2011 October 2011 November 2011 December 2011 January 2012 February 2012 March 2012 April 2012 May 2012 June 2012 July 2012 August 2012 September 2012 October 2012 November 2012 December 2012 January 2013 February 2013 March 2013 April 2013 May 2013 June 2013 July 2013 August 2013 September 2013 October 2013 November 2013 December 2013 January 2014 February 2014 March 2014 April 2014 May 2014 June 2014 July 2014 August 2014 September 2014 October 2014 November 2014 December 2014 January 2015 February 2015 March 2015 April 2015 May 2015 June 2015 July 2015 August 2015 September 2015 October 2015 November 2015 December 2015 January 2016 February 2016 March 2016 April 2016 May 2016 June 2016 July 2016 August 2016 September 2016 October 2016 November 2016 December 2016 January 2017 February 2017 March 2017 April 2017 May 2017 June 2017 July 2017 August 2017 September 2017 October 2017 November 2017 December 2017 January 2018 February 2018 March 2018 April 2018 May 2018 June 2018 July 2018 August 2018 September 2018 October 2018 November 2018 December 2018 January 2019 February 2019 March 2019 April 2019 May 2019 June 2019 July 2019 August 2019 September 2019 October 2019 November 2019 December 2019 January 2020 February 2020 March 2020 April 2020 May 2020 June 2020 July 2020 August 2020 September 2020 October 2020 November 2020 December 2020 January 2021 February 2021 March 2021 April 2021 May 2021 June 2021 July 2021 August 2021 September 2021 October 2021 November 2021 December 2021 January 2022 February 2022 March 2022 April 2022 May 2022 June 2022 July 2022 August 2022 September 2022 October 2022 November 2022 December 2022 January 2023 February 2023 March 2023 April 2023 May 2023 June 2023 July 2023 August 2023 September 2023 October 2023 November 2023 December 2023 January 2024 February 2024 March 2024
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29
30
31
News Every Day |

No, You’re Crying About a Helicopter on Mars

ingenuity on mars
NASA / JPL-Caltech / Jason Major

For the first time in history, humankind has taken flight on another planet. Millions of miles from Earth, on an alien world with a wisp-thin atmosphere, a tiny helicopter rose into the air, hovered for 39 seconds, and then gently touched back down on the surface of Mars.

Today’s historic flight is a tremendous feat of engineering and a marvelous display of—as the aircraft is named—ingenuity. Attached to the robot is a piece of fabric from the wing of the Wright brothers’ first aircraft, an emblem of humanity’s desire to take to the skies. And yet, when I look at pictures of Ingenuity or listen to NASA engineers discuss it, my reaction has nothing to do with the sophistication of the machinery or what it means for the robotic exploration of Mars. My thoughts are mostly Omgggg and look how cute it is and It’s doing such a good job.

I am not a spacecraft engineer, nor do I know this robot personally. But I am mortal, and we mortals tend to anthropomorphize robots and even have fuzzy feelings toward them. (The exception: If their appearance falls into the “uncanny valley” category, they can creep us out instead). A whole assortment of research on the relationship between people and machines shows that we can’t help attaching our little human feelings to the little mechanical robots we build. And NASA knows it.

As with other robotic missions, NASA maintains a Twitter account for Perseverance, the rover that brought Ingenuity to Mars in February, and dispatches are written from the perspective of the machine. “I love rocks,” Perseverance tweeted in February to its followers, who currently number 2.7 million. “I’m on the move!” it exclaimed in March as it took its first drive. “I’ve taken my first selfie,” the rover said earlier this month, showing us a picture of its robotic frame, with Ingenuity in the background. NASA has already shared imagery of Ingenuity’s flight—from Percy, stationed nearby, and from the helicopter itself, which captured its shadow flitting across the surface of Mars.

[Read: No one has seen a Mars landing quite like this]

Perseverance and Ingenuity were not designed to be lovable. They can’t pout or whir with delight like Pixar’s WALL-E. But Percy can drill, and Ingenuity can wiggle its blades. Although these behaviors are programmed by engineers on Earth, to the public, watching from afar, the movements seem deliberate, as if the robots chose to probe the Martian soil, or to stretch their metal appendages. And when robots show such lifelike behaviors, our social brains react with empathy. (It also helps that Ingenuity, weighing less than four pounds, is smol; we’re more likely to find tiny things cuter than large things, and we tend to feel nurturing toward cute things.) Sometimes, such as in the case of Opportunity, the Mars rover that stopped working after a massive dust storm, people feel grief. In the case of Ingenuity’s first flight, we experience joy.

The Ingenuity helicopter arrived on Mars tucked safely inside the Perseverance rover’s belly. Percy carefully deployed Ingenuity in a delicate sequence over a few days, and then drove away, exposing the aerial explorer to the Martian elements. After a cold, dark night, Ingenuity soaked up the sun, charging its little solar panel. Percy watched from a distance as Ingenuity took flight and reached an altitude of 10 feet (3 meters), chirping pings of progress back to the rover. The whole scene resembled a mother bird watching her fledgling learn to fly into a big world full of dangers. “I think many people would empathize with the little bird because, to some extent, it’s a big achievement for that bird,” Marynel Vázquez, a computer scientist at Yale who studies interaction between humans and robots, told me. “Now the challenge is with engineering. We see this little tiny thing trying to survive on the red planet, which is a very harsh environment.”

Over the next few weeks, there will be more flight attempts. Ingenuity was designed to be lightweight, with blades that spin 40 times per second, so that it could generate enough lift to rise in an atmosphere that has 1 percent the density of our own. It’s capable of covering a distance of 980 feet (300 meters) at a time, and reaching an altitude of 15 feet (4.5 meters). Because of communication delays between Earth and Mars, engineers can’t control the helicopter with a joystick, so Ingenuity makes some decisions on its own, analyzing real-time data from its sensors and adjusting course so that it doesn’t stray from its programmed flight path. What a smart little robot!

[Read: Scientists really, really want a piece of Mars]

MiMi Aung, the Ingenuity project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, told reporters at a recent press conference that the team will instruct the helicopter to make more daring flights. The Ingenuity mission is what NASA calls a technology demonstration, and it has been allotted just 30 Martian sols, equivalent to 31 Earth days, to do its work. So the team is going all out. “By the fifth flight, if we get that far, we are going to take very bold flights and take high risks,” Aung said, adding that the helicopter is unlikely to land safely after a certain point. The sight of Ingenuity smashed to bits might cause consternation for some people; studies have shown that people feel sympathy for robots when they see them being yelled at or physically abused, even machines that don’t have any human characteristics, such as Roombas.

When Ingenuity’s time is up, Perseverance will drive away to do its own work, searching for signs of fossilized life embedded in the craggy landscape. Ingenuity will remain where it is, possibly in pieces, but maybe as whole as the day it arrived. It might still be functional, capable of charging itself day after day. But it won’t be able to communicate with Percy, or us here on Earth. The rover won’t come back. Ingenuity will remain alone forever, warming itself in the sunlight that streaks through the Martian skies. Perhaps one reason NASA hasn’t given Ingenuity its own Twitter account is because most of its posts would be something like “Hello? Guys? Can anyone hear me?”

But there is more than empathy at play here. People also have a tendency to project their own feelings onto inanimate objects. When Ingenuity took off this week, I thought of the boat. You know the one. Giant, stuck, blocking traffic in the Suez Canal for days. As my colleague Amanda Mull wrote last month, the story of Ever Given exposed all the messy substratum of the shipping industry, “the persistent frailty of the global system on which corporations have built our physical world.” The boat also seemed, for many people, like the perfect encapsulation of how bogged down they had felt during the coronavirus pandemic. The story of the little Mars helicopter feels like the opposite. We do not see the technical challenges and failed test runs that took place on Earth, only the beautiful, butterscotch-colored expanse of Mars. Ingenuity is very much unstuck, and its historic flight feels hopeful because it has coincided with a different moment for Americans: the thaw of spring, the steady distribution of vaccines, the light at the end of the COVID-19 tunnel.

[Read: Galaxy brain is real]

For NASA’s part, the agency hopes that Ingenuity is the first in a line of aerial explorers on Mars. The first rover on the red planet—named Sojourner, in honor of Sojourner Truth, the enslaved woman who escaped bondage and became a civil-rights activist—was a technology demonstration too, and its mission led to the development of more rovers: Spirit, Opportunity, Curiosity, and Perseverance. (NASA is also currently at work on a drone mission to another world: Titan, a moon of Saturn with a thick atmosphere, where it rains methane instead of water.) Scientists and engineers, always looking ahead, say future generations of Mars flyers could explore hard-to-reach spots and carry important payloads during astronaut missions.

But that future is still many years away. For now, robots are our best explorers, on Mars and beyond. With their help, we have roamed, drilled, and gazed on the red planet. We have flown through the rings of Saturn, grabbed a piece of an asteroid, and discovered a heart-shaped plain on Pluto’s surface. We’ve even thrown ourselves into the atmospheres of other planets. Robots have been our eyes and ears and, now, our wings.

Киев

Киев признал стагнацию ВСУ по всей линии фронта

The 10 Intense New Action Movies on Netflix That Left Me on the Edge of My Seat!

I was diagnosed with cancer aged 39… you are never too rich, too famous or too young, says Dr Philippa Kaye

Top 10 Emmanuelle Seigner Movies

Top 5 Websites to Watch FREE Movies - TV Shows (No Sign up!)

Ria.city






Read also

Next Up: Exeter City vs Charlton Athletic

The IRA’s New Conventional Wisdom

What is the Goldilocks Zone and how can you leverage it?

News, articles, comments, with a minute-by-minute update, now on Today24.pro

News Every Day

Top 10 Emmanuelle Seigner Movies

Today24.pro — latest news 24/7. You can add your news instantly now — here


News Every Day

I was diagnosed with cancer aged 39… you are never too rich, too famous or too young, says Dr Philippa Kaye



Sports today


Новости тенниса
ATP

Хачанов: хочу вернуться в топ-10 ATP



Спорт в России и мире
Москва

Федерация бокса России на ВДНХ



All sports news today





Sports in Russia today

Москва

Федерация бокса России на ВДНХ


Новости России

Game News

Шапки женские вязаные на Wildberries, 2024 — новый цвет от 392 руб. (модель 466)


Russian.city


Українські новини

Хризантема - вродлива квітка, що вимагає особливого догляду


Губернаторы России
Елена Волкова

Перенос дат II этапа культурного проекта «Классика: история и современность» в Дмитрове


Лавров заявил, что сфер сотрудничества России и Запада практически не осталось

Заказать недорогой ремонт кухонной мебели в районе в Москве и Московской области

Педагогическая дилемма: почему учителя не хотят работать в школах

Московская область - Изготовление металлических навесов


"Прости!!!": Пугачева попросила прощения у Манижи

Сергей Шнуров и Гарик Мартиросян «не смогли поделить» участницу «Новой Фабрики звезд»

На Моргенштерна завели три новых дела

Shaman направит деньги от концерта в Ессентуках пострадавшим в "Крокусе"


Виктория Азаренко вышла в полуфинал турнира WTA-1000 в Майами

Чесноков оценил шансы Александровой в борьбе за выход в финал турнира WTA в Майами

Рыбакина о том, что не играла в Индиан-Уэллс из-за болезни: «К сожалению, восстановление заняло много времени»

Янник Синнер поделился впечатлениями от общения с игроками сборной Италии по футболу



Заказать недорогой ремонт кухонной мебели в районе в Москве и Московской области

«Радио Зенит» – информационный партнер форума «Мы вместе. Спорт»

Шапки женские вязаные на Wildberries, 2024 — новый цвет от 392 руб. (модель 466)

Пассажир рейса Москва — Пермь попал в реанимацию


Тариф – Большой Концертный Тур. Организация серии больших концертов.

«Радио Зенит» – информационный партнер форума «Мы вместе. Спорт»

Среднее число детей на одну женщину в России. Статистика

Песков: в РФ безостановочно ведут работу по борьбе с коррупцией


Фильм Джонни Деппа о Модильяни покажут в России

Казанский ТЮЗ предложил зрителям самим вернуть деньги за отмененные спектакли

Спортсменки из Электростали приняли участие в учебно-тренировочном мероприятии в Китае

Фролов: Конвенциальной войны Россия-НАТО не будет – только ядерная



Путин в России и мире






Персональные новости Russian.city
Юрий Лоза

Композитор, певец Юрий Лоза: «В обществе перестали пестовать авторитет интеллектуального труда»



News Every Day

Top 5 Websites to Watch FREE Movies - TV Shows (No Sign up!)




Friends of Today24

Музыкальные новости

Персональные новости