"Planetary Exploration with Ingenuity and Dragonfly aims to lay out to 'space people' what they need to know about rotorcraft, and to 'helicopter people' what they need to know about delivering vehicles through space and operating them on other planets. Ingenuity is a small, solar-powered robotic helicopter which landed on Mars, along with the Perseverance rover, as part of NASA's Mars 2020 mission on February 18, 2021. On April 19, 2021, Ingenuity became the first aircraft to complete a powered, controlled flight on another planet. It climbed to 10 feet (3 meters) and maintained a stable hover for 30 seconds. It has since conducted nearly twenty total flights. Dragonfly is a much larger rotorcraft that is currently scheduled to launch in 2027 and arrive on Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, by 2034. This multi-rotor vehicle is intended to fly to multiple locations on Titan for repeatable and targeted access to surface materials, illuminating the habitability of the environment and investigating the progression of its prebiotic chemistry. This book is not a formal textbook on rotorcraft, nor on spacecraft engineering. But it does outline the basics of these distinct endeavors and their intersections. References are provided for the interested reader to delve further. The book is not a history either, but a snapshot: Ingenuity's story is not quite finished, and much of Dragonfly's story lies in future. This is a synthesis of the state of the art today, in a narrative that is ongoing"-- Provided by publisher.
This resource is supported by the Institute of Museum and Library Services under the provisions of the Library Services and Technology Act as administered by State Library of Iowa.