NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover took a selfie with the Ingenuity helicopter, seen here about 13 feet (3.9 meters) from the rover.
The paper, “Will the Mars Helicopter Induce Local Martian Atmospheric Breakdown?” was published in March 2021 in the Planetary Science Journal. “The electric currents generated by the fast-rotating blades on drones are too small to be a threat to the craft or the Martian environment,” he said in a press release, “but they offer an opportunity to do some additional science to improve our understanding of an accumulation of …. This process also occurs naturally at much larger scales on Earth as a corona or electrical glow sometimes seen on aircraft and ships in electrical storms known as Saint Elmo’s Fire.Īlthough the currents generated by a drone or tiny helicopter like Ingenuity are really small, Farrell said they might be large enough to cause the air around the blades and other parts of the craft to glow a blue-purple color. The separation of charge can create an electric field. When certain pairs of materials, such as a carpet and your shoes rub together, one material gives up some of its electrons to the other material. But on Mars, anything “rubbing” against the uber-dry atmosphere – and even the dry soil - can create a phenomenon called triboelectric charging. On Earth, this static discharge is usually just an annoyance. “ NASA’s experimental Ingenuity helicopter does not fly during this time, but future drones could be cleared for evening flight and look for this glow.” “The faint glow would be most visible during evening hours when the background sky is darker,” said William Farrell, from Goddard Space Flight Center and lead author of a paper on this topic. If the Ingenuity helicopter would fly at night on Mars, its very possible the whirring rotors would create enough static electricity in the extremely dry Martian atmosphere to cause the air around the craft to glow.
Although the currents generated by the drone in the atmosphere are small, they might be large enough to cause the air around the blades and other parts of the craft to glow a blue-purple color. The glow, exaggerated for visibility, might happen if the drone’s spinning rotor blades generate an electric field that causes electric currents to flow in the Martian air around the craft. This is an artist’s concept of a glow surrounding a drone at Mars during flight.
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