Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is a federally funded research and development center in Pasadena, California, United States. Founded in 1936 by Caltech researchers, the laboratory is now owned and sponsored by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and administered and managed by the California Institute of Technology.
An aerobot is an aerial robot, usually used in the context of an unmanned space probe or unmanned aerial vehicle.
A Mars rover is a remote-controlled motor vehicle designed to travel on the surface of Mars. Rovers have several advantages over stationary landers: they examine more territory, they can be directed to interesting features, they can place themselves in sunny positions to weather winter months, and they can advance the knowledge of how to perform very remote robotic vehicle control. They serve a different purpose than orbital spacecraft like Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. A more recent development is the Mars helicopter.
Charles Elachi is a Lebanese-American professor (emeritus) of electrical engineering and planetary science at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). From 2001 to 2016 he was the 8th director of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and vice president of Caltech.
Spacecraft operating in the inner Solar System usually rely on the use of power electronics-managed photovoltaic solar panels to derive electricity from sunlight. Outside the orbit of Jupiter, solar radiation is too weak to produce sufficient power within current solar technology and spacecraft mass limitations, so radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTGs) are instead used as a power source.
A Mars aircraft is a vehicle capable of sustaining powered flight in the atmosphere of Mars. So far, the Mars helicopter Ingenuity is the only aircraft ever to fly on Mars, completing 72 successful flights covering 17.242 km (10.714 mi) in 2 hours, 8 minutes and 48 seconds of flight time. Ingenuity operated on Mars for 1042 sols, until its rotor blades, possibly all four, were damaged, causing NASA to retire the craft.
Mars 2020 is a NASA mission that includes the rover Perseverance, the now-retired small robotic helicopter Ingenuity, and associated delivery systems, as part of the Mars Exploration Program. Mars 2020 was launched on an Atlas V rocket at 11:50:01 UTC on July 30, 2020, and landed in the Martian crater Jezero on February 18, 2021, with confirmation received at 20:55 UTC. On March 5, 2021, NASA named the landing site Octavia E. Butler Landing. As of 11 March 2024, Perseverance has been on Mars for 1087 sols. Ingenuity operated on Mars for 1042 sols before sustaining serious damage to its rotor blades, possibly all four, causing NASA to retire the craft on January 25, 2024.
The Mars Oxygen In-Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE) was a technology demonstration on the NASA Mars 2020 rover Perseverance investigating the production of oxygen on Mars. On April 20, 2021, MOXIE produced oxygen from carbon dioxide in the Martian atmosphere by using solid oxide electrolysis. This was the first experimental extraction of a natural resource from another planet for human use. The technology may be scaled up for use in a human mission to the planet to provide breathable oxygen, oxidizer, and propellant; water may also be produced by combining the produced oxygen with hydrogen.
Michael M. Watkins is an American engineer, scientist, and a Professor of Aerospace and Geophysics at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech). He previously served as the 9th director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, and as a vice president of Caltech, which staffs and manages JPL for NASA. His directorial position was effective from July 1, 2016 to August 20, 2021.
Ingenuity, nicknamed Ginny, is an autonomous NASA helicopter that operated on Mars from 2021 to 2024 as part of the Mars 2020 mission. Ingenuity made its first flight on April 19, 2021, demonstrating that flight is possible in the extremely thin atmosphere of Mars, and becoming the first aircraft to conduct a powered and controlled extra-terrestrial flight. It was designed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in collaboration with AeroVironment, NASA's Ames Research Center and Langley Research Center with some components supplied by Lockheed Martin Space, Qualcomm, and SolAero.
MiMi Aung is a Burmese-American engineer. Currently, she is director of technical program management for Amazon's Project Kuiper, an initiative to increase broadband internet access through an array of satellites in low Earth orbit.
Perseverance, nicknamed Percy, is a car-sized Mars rover designed to explore the Jezero crater on Mars as part of NASA's Mars 2020 mission. It was manufactured by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and launched on July 30, 2020, at 11:50 UTC. Confirmation that the rover successfully landed on Mars was received on February 18, 2021, at 20:55 UTC. As of 11 March 2024, Perseverance has been active on Mars for 1087 sols since its landing. Following the rover's arrival, NASA named the landing site Octavia E. Butler Landing.
Swati Mohan is an Indian-American aerospace engineer and was the Guidance and Controls Operations Lead on the NASA Mars 2020 mission.
The Mars 2020 mission, consisting of the rover Perseverance and helicopter Ingenuity, was launched on July 30, 2020, and landed in Jezero crater on Mars on February 18, 2021. As of March 11, 2024, Perseverance has been on the planet for 1087 sols. Ingenuity operated for 1042 sols until its rotor blades, possibly all four, were damaged during the landing of flight 72 on January 18, 2024, causing NASA to retire the craft.
Håvard Fjær Grip is a Norwegian cybernetics engineer and robotics technologist. He was the chief pilot of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, and led the development of its aerodynamics and flight control system. Grip successfully flew Ingenuity's first flight on Mars on April 19, 2021, which made history as the first extraterrestrial helicopter flight. As of October 2023, he is chief engineer of the Mars Sample Recovery Helicopters, part of the NASA-ESA Mars Sample Return campaign.
Timothy Canham is an American software engineer. He works at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), where he is the operations lead and former software lead for the Mars helicopter Ingenuity. He resides in Santa Clarita, California.
The Mars Sample Recovery Helicopters are a pair of robotic unmanned helicopters being developed by the engineers of the American company AeroVironment Inc. and proposed in March 2022 as a means of delivering Martian soil samples from the sample depots made by the Perseverance rover to the location of the Sample Retrieval Lander (SRL) that will load these samples onto the Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV), which, in accordance with the NASA-ESA Mars Sample Return program, will deliver them to low Martian orbit for future return to Earth.
The NASA-ESA Mars Sample Return is a proposed Flagship-class Mars sample return (MSR) mission to collect Martian rock and soil samples in 43 small, cylindrical, pencil-sized, titanium tubes and return them to Earth around 2033.
Nacer E. Chahat is a French Algerian-American engineer and researcher at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
