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Comment by hedgehog | Hacker News Reader

I read that the design life of the helicopter is five flights. Does anyone know what the limiting factors are? The brutal cold and abrasive dust both seem like they could contribute but I am curious what the real answer is.

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The "design life" figure is something like the 5th percentile, if previous rovers are anything to go by. As in, they can estimate a 95% chance it makes it through 5 flights.

I'd bet on it making 20+ at evens.

If we go by MER Opportunity standards (surviving 55x times its design timespan) we might go up to 275 flights! :D

Dust on the solar panel seems likely to be a problem after the first landing, unless it's got a clever way to keep it clean.

And its got to be tough conditions for the battery, low temperatures and probably deep discharges to make the most of it.

It's powered by plutonium.

Rovers with solar panels deal with the dust by waiting for a storm to blow it away.

Perseverance is powered by an RTG, but the Ingenuity, the helicopter, is powered by lithium-ion batteries recharged via a solar panel.

I'd expect it to kick up a fair bit of dust on landing. But I suppose that's something else that'll behave a bit differently on Mars to what we'd expect in Earth's atmosphere.

The helicopter doesn't have enough power generation to stay warm through the Martian winter; the solar panel that feeds it is extremely small, so at the very least, it is unlikely to last beyond the summer. Here's the thermal design paper for the helicopter:

https://ttu-ir.tdl.org/bitstream/handle/2346/74036/ICES_2018...

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