A team of researchers led by Boise State University physics professor Brian Jackson recently published a Martian wind analysis using data from NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter. This is the first time anyone has used an aircraft to measure wind speed and direction on another planet.
This research builds on existing work to understand the Martian atmosphere and its weather patterns. The Perseverance rover, which landed on Mars in 2021 along with the Ingenuity helicopter, carries the Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer. This tool collects atmospheric measurements near the Martian surface, but it’s limited by the rover’s reach and can only measure winds within about 1.5 meters above the surface.
Ingenuity can go much higher in the atmosphere, but it has no onboard wind sensors. That’s where Jackson and his team had to innovate. They were able to use engineering data from the aircraft to calculate wind velocity. The group used information about the helicopter’s attitude – its orientation relative to the horizon – to infer wind speed and direction at flight altitudes between three and 24 meters above the ground.
The researchers compared their wind calculations against the data Perseverance collected closer to the ground. In several instances, they calculated wind speeds faster from what Perseverance measured, in some cases much faster.
Jackson and his team inferred speeds from Ingenuity almost twice that speed. “We definitely expected Ingenuity to see somewhat higher speeds, but we really did not expect to see winds so much faster than what Perseverance saw,” Jackson said. Future improvements to their techniques might modify their results, but for now, the results pose interesting questions about the Martian atmosphere. “Maybe our atmospheric models need some major retuning. More work will help us figure it out.”
Ingenuity was the first drone aircraft to fly on another planet in our solar system, but it won’t be the last. NASA plans to launch a quadcopter drone called Dragonfly to Saturn’s moon Titan in 2028. Future Mars missions could also include more advanced helicopters.
In addition to providing new insights about the Martian atmosphere, this research from Jackson’s team will lay the groundwork for future scientists studying our solar system with aircraft on other planets.