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Comment by Pasorrijer | Hacker News Reader

Everytime I read the words "Mars Helicopter" I get giddy. Especially the fact that this is running on close to COTS cellphone hardware, it just makes me so happy for the future of space exploration.

Now to design a helicopter to do the same thing on Venus and Mercury!

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My friend, I hope I have the pleasure of showing you, for the first time, the nuclear powered autonomous helicopter going to Titan:

https://dragonfly.jhuapl.edu/

And if it's not the first time, then I hope we can both enjoy remembering this again!

The hardware won't be COTS. Rarely is anything COTS that's not a tech demo / high risk experiment. I'm guessing follow-on Mars copters have a 50% chance of being COTS, but that's trending upward as Ing. lives and does good work on Mars.

> I'm guessing follow-on Mars copters have a 50% chance of being COTS

It's surprising considering that Mars radioactivity is 12 times that of Earth, and occasionally 50 times, because it doesn't have a magnetosphere. How are they hardened against cosmic radiation?

Well, it wouldn't be any fun if I told you that.

So, I'll let the engineers tell you: https://trs.jpl.nasa.gov/bitstream/handle/2014/46229/CL%2317...

COTS components abound!

In short:

"[The Snapdragon] processor implements visual navigation via a velocity estimate derived from features tracked in the VGA camera, filter propagation for use in flight control, data management, command processing, telemetry generation, and radio communication. The SnapdragonTM processor is connected to two flight-control (FC) Microcontroller Units (MCU) via a Universal Asynchronous Receiver/Transmitter (UART). These MCU processor units operate redundantly, receiving and processing identical sensor data to perform the flight-control functions necessary to keep the vehicle flying in the air."

They also use Zigbee radios to communicate with the rover.

I'm not sure you'd use a helicopter on Venus, certainly not at ground level. Maybe an airship that can survive suphuric acid in the upper atmosphere where it's a little more forgiving (albeit with less hope on finding organic phosphene).

We've got Dragonfly to look forward to though! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dragonfly_(spacecraft)

You could probably make a more conventional aircraft with a high lift wing concept that could spend most of its time gliding above the clouds. And a small electric motor to provide thrust when needed. But it would mostly ride currents and glide. Given how thick the atmosphere is on Venus, you could probably get very high lift figures.

The most likely scenario based on all the reports I've read is a variable altitude balloon (similar to Google Loon).

The second most likely is a hybrid airship. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hybrid_airship

Mercury doesn't have atmosphere

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