原文：
Now uncocooned from its protective carbon-fiber shield, the helicopter is being readied for its next steps.
翻译：
在脱离碳纤维防护罩的保护后，“机智号”（Ingenuity）直升机正为下一步做准备。
原文：
NASA is targeting no earlier than April 8 for the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter to make the first attempt at powered, controlled flight of an aircraft on another planet. Before the 4-pound (1.8-kilogram) rotorcraft can attempt its first flight, however, both it and its team must meet a series of daunting milestones.
Ingenuity remains attached to the belly of NASA’s Perseverance rover, which touched down on Mars Feb. 18. On March 21, the rover deployed the guitar case-shaped graphite composite debris shield that protected Ingenuity during landing. The rover currently is in transit to the “airfield” where Ingenuity will attempt to fly. Once deployed, Ingenuity will have 30 Martian days, or sols, (31 Earth days) to conduct its test flight campaign.
“When NASA’s Sojourner rover landed on Mars in 1997, it proved that roving the Red Planet was possible and completely redefined our approach to how we explore Mars. Similarly, we want to learn about the potential Ingenuity has for the future of science research,” said Lori Glaze, director of the Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters. “Aptly named, Ingenuity is a technology demonstration that aims to be the first powered flight on another world and, if successful, could further expand our horizons and broaden the scope of what is possible with Mars exploration.”
Flying in a controlled manner on Mars is far more difficult than flying on Earth. The Red Planet has significant gravity (about one-third that of Earth’s), but its atmosphere is just 1% as dense as Earth’s at the surface. During Martian daytime, the planet’s surface receives only about half the amount of solar energy that reaches Earth during its daytime, and nighttime temperatures can drop as low as minus 130 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 90 degrees Celsius), which can freeze and crack unprotected electrical components.
To fit within the available accommodations provided by the Perseverance rover, the Ingenuity helicopter must be small. To fly in the Mars environment, it must be lightweight. To survive the frigid Martian nights, it must have enough energy to power internal heaters. The system – from the performance of its rotors in rarified air to its solar panels, electrical heaters, and other components – has been tested and retested in the vacuum chambers and test labs of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California.
“Every step we have taken since this journey began six years ago has been uncharted territory in the history of aircraft,” said Bob Balaram, Mars Helicopter chief engineer at JPL. “And while getting deployed to the surface will be a big challenge, surviving that first night on Mars alone, without the rover protecting it and keeping it powered, will be an even bigger one.”
翻译：
NASA的计划是尝试“机智号”（Ingenuity）火星直升机在另一个行星上的首飞，而时间不会早于4月8日。然而在这艘重达4磅（1.8公斤）的旋翼机进行首飞前，它和它的团队必须经历一系列艰巨的里程碑。
2月18日，NASA的“毅力号”探测器（Perseverance rover）在火星着陆，此时“机智号”（Ingenuity）仍搭载在“毅力号”探测器的腹部。3月21日，“毅力号”探测器为“机智号”安装了吉他盒形的石墨复合碎片防护罩（上图），以确保它能安全着陆。目前，“毅力号”探测器正在前往“起飞点”的途中，“机智号”将在那里尝试首飞。一旦部署完毕，“机智号”将有30个火星日（31个地球日）的时间来进行它的测试飞行。
“在1997年，当NASA的探测器登陆火星时，已经证明了在火星上探测的可能性，并且完全重定义了我们探索火星的方式。相同地，我们也想了解到“独创性”（Ingenuity）对未来科学研究的潜在作用。”NASA 总部行星科学部主任 Lori Glaze 说，“机智号（Ingenuity）因此得名，它的目标是成为首个在其他行星运行的飞行器，如果成功的话，它将进一步扩展我们的视野，以及拓宽探索火星的范围。”
在火星上控制飞行器远比在地球上困难得多。这颗红色行星虽然拥有明显的重力（约是地球的三分之一），但是它的大气密度只有地球的1% 。在火星的日间，火星地表能接收到的太阳能只有地球的一半左右，而它的夜间温度会骤降至零下130华氏度（约零下90摄氏度），未受保护的电子元件将会被低温彻底冻坏。
为了能够满足“毅力号”探测器的装载条件，“机智号”直升机必须是小型的。为了能在火星环境中飞行，它又必须是轻型的。为了能在寒冷的火星夜间中生存，它还必须有足够的能量来驱动内部设备。这套系统——小到从它转子在稀薄空气中的性能，大到它太阳能电池板、电加热器和其他组件——都已经在真空缸以及NASA位于南加州的喷气推进实验室 （Jet Propulsion Laboratory，JPL）中进行过了反反复复的测试。
“自六年前开启这一旅程以来，我们迈出的每一步都是飞机历史上未知的领域。”喷气推进实验室的火星直升机总工程师 Bob Balaram 说，“尽管将飞行器部署到火星地表是一个巨大的挑战，但如果没有“毅力号”探测器的保护和供能，“机智号”单独在火星上度过的第一个夜晚会比前者更加艰难。”
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原文：
Before Ingenuity takes its first flight on Mars, it must be squarely in the middle of its airfield – a 33-by-33-foot (10-by-10-meter) patch of Martian real estate chosen for its flatness and lack of obstructions. Once the helicopter and rover teams confirm that Perseverance is situated exactly where they want it to be inside the airfield, the elaborate process to deploy the helicopter on the surface of Mars begins.
“As with everything with the helicopter, this type of deployment has never been done before,” said Farah Alibay, Mars Helicopter integration lead for the Perseverance rover. “Once we start the deployment there is no turning back. All activities are closely coordinated, irreversible, and dependent on each other. If there is even a hint that something isn’t going as expected, we may decide to hold off for a sol or more until we have a better idea what is going on.”
The helicopter deployment process will take about six sols (six days, four hours on Earth). On the first sol, the team on Earth will activate a bolt-breaking device, releasing a locking mechanism that helped hold the helicopter firmly against the rover’s belly during launch and Mars landing. The following sol, they will fire a cable-cutting pyrotechnic device, enabling the mechanized arm that holds Ingenuity to begin rotating the helicopter out of its horizontal position. This is also when the rotorcraft will extend two of its four landing legs.
During the third sol of the deployment sequence, a small electric motor will finish rotating Ingenuity until it latches, bringing the helicopter completely vertical. During the fourth sol, the final two landing legs will snap into position. On each of those four sols, the Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering (WATSON) imager will take confirmation shots of Ingenuity as it incrementally unfolds into its flight configuration. In its final position, the helicopter will hang suspended at about 5 inches (13 centimeters) over the Martian surface. At that point, only a single bolt and a couple dozen tiny electrical contacts will connect the helicopter to Perseverance. On the fifth sol of deployment, the team will use the final opportunity to utilize Perseverance as a power source and charge Ingenuity’s six battery cells.
“Once we cut the cord with Perseverance and drop those final 5 inches to the surface, we want to have our big friend drive away as quickly as possible so we can get the Sun’s rays on our solar panel and begin recharging our batteries,” said Balaram.
On the sixth and final scheduled sol of this deployment phase, the team will need to confirm three things: that Ingenuity’s four legs are firmly on the surface of Jezero Crater, that the rover did, indeed, drive about 16 feet (about 5 meters) away, and that both helicopter and rover are communicating via their onboard radios. This milestone also initiates the 30-sol clock during which time all preflight checks and flight tests must take place.
“Ingenuity is an experimental engineering flight test – we want to see if we can fly at Mars,” said MiMi Aung, project manager for Ingenuity Mars Helicopter at JPL. “There are no science instruments onboard and no goals to obtain scientific information. We are confident that all the engineering data we want to obtain both on the surface of Mars and aloft can be done within this 30-sol window.”
As with deployment, the helicopter and rover teams will approach the upcoming flight test methodically. If the team misses or has questions about an important preflight milestone, they may take one or more sols to better understand the issue. If the helicopter survives the first night of the sequence period on the surface of Mars, however, the team will spend the next several sols doing everything possible to ensure a successful flight, including wiggling the rotor blades and verifying the performance of the inertial measurement unit, as well as testing the entire rotor system during a spin-up to 2,537 rpm (while Ingenuity’s landing gear remain firmly on the surface).
翻译：
在“机智号”直升机的火星首飞开启之前，它必须正好位于起飞点的中央——一块33 * 33英尺（10 * 10米）大小，地形平坦且没有障碍物的平地。一旦直升机和探测器小组确认了“毅力号”已准确抵达他们所期望的正确位置，这个精心设计在火星表面上部署“机智号”直升机的过程就开始了。
“就像直升机相关的一切，这种部署方式前所未有。”火星直升机集成负责人 Farah Alibay 说。“一旦开始后便无法回头，所有行动都紧密相连，不可逆转，并相互依赖着。如果有迹象表明事情没有按照预期进行，我们可能会决定推迟一个火星日（长24小时37分22秒）甚至更长时间，直到有了更好的方法来推进。”
直升机部署过程需要花费六个火星日（地球上六天四个小时）。在第一个火星日，地球上的团队将激活螺栓断裂装置（bolt-breaking device），将这个把直升机和探测器在发射和着陆过程中紧密连接的锁固机制释放开来。在接下来的火星日，团队将启动一个用于切断线缆的引爆装置（cable-cutting pyrotechnic device），使得托住“机智号”的机械臂开始旋转，并将直升机推离其所在的水平位置，同时这也是旋翼机将它的四条着陆架中的两条延展出去的时候。
部署次序为第三个火星日时，将通过一个小型电机来旋转 “机智号”到锁定的位置，使其保持为完全垂直。到了第四个火星日，剩下的四条着陆架将迅速就位。前四个火星日的每一天中，可操作工程用广角地形传感器( Wide Angle Topographic Sensor for Operations and eNgineering，WATSON)成像仪在逐渐展开进入飞行配置的过程中，将持续地拍摄“机智号”的跟踪照片。在最终位置，直升机将悬停在火星表面约5英寸（13厘米）的高度。到那时只需要一个螺栓和几十个电接点就能保持直升机和“毅力号”间的联系。在部署的第五个火星日，团队将用最后的机会把“毅力号”作为一个动力源，为“机智号”的六个电池组充电。
Balaram 说: “一旦我们切断“机智号”与“毅力号”的相连，从5英寸的高度下降到地面上，我们希望我们的大朋友（“毅力号”探测器）尽快开到更远些的地方去，这样我们才能让太阳光照射到它的太阳能电池板上，继续为电池充电。”
在部署阶段的第六个也是最后一个火星日，团队需要确认的有三件事：“机智号”的四条着陆架已牢牢地固定在 Jezero 陨石坑的表面上，探测器确确实实行驶了16英尺远（约5米），以及直升机和探测器都能通过机载无线电进行通信。这一里程碑也标志着所有飞行前必须进行的检查和测试已经完成，即将启动30个火星日的飞行测试。
“机智号是一项实验性的工程飞行测试——我们想看看我们能否能在火星上飞行。”喷气推进实验室“机智号”火星直升机项目经理MiMi Aung 说。“机上没有科学仪器，也没有获取科学信息的目标。我们相信，对我们所有想要的火星表面以及高空的工程数据都能在30个火星日的窗口期内完成获取。”
与部署一样，直升机和探测器团队也要有条不紊地做好即将到来的飞行测试。如果团队对飞行前的重要里程碑有疑问或者没弄清楚，他们可能需要一个或多个火星日来更好地理解这个问题。如果直升机能在火星表面部署后的第一个晚上存活下来，无论如何，研究小组都要在接下来的几个火星日，尽一切可能确保飞行成功。这包括摆动螺旋桨以及验证惯性模组（inertial measurement unit，IMU）的性能，还要测试整个旋翼系统自转至2537转/分钟的情况（此时“机智号”仍然牢牢地固定在火星表面）。
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Once the team is ready to attempt the first flight, Perseverance will receive and relay to Ingenuity the final flight instructions from JPL mission controllers. Several factors will determine the precise time for the flight, including modeling of local wind patterns plus measurements taken by the Mars Environmental Dynamics Analyzer (MEDA) aboard Perseverance. Ingenuity will run its rotors to 2,537 rpm and, if all final self-checks look good, lift off. After climbing at a rate of about 3 feet per second (1 meter per second), the helicopter will hover at 10 feet (3 meters) above the surface for up to 30 seconds. Then, the Mars Helicopter will descend and touch back down on the Martian surface.
Several hours after the first flight has occurred, Perseverance will downlink Ingenuity’s first set of engineering data and, possibly, images and video from the rover’s Navigation Cameras and Mastcam-Z. From the data downlinked that first evening after the flight, the Mars Helicopter team expects to be able to determine if their first attempt to fly at Mars was a success.
On the following sol, all the remaining engineering data collected during the flight, as well as some low-resolution black-and-white imagery from the helicopter’s own Navigation Camera, could be downlinked to JPL. The third sol of this phase, the two images taken by the helicopter’s high-resolution color camera should arrive. The Mars Helicopter team will use all information available to determine when and how to move forward with their next test.
“Mars is hard,” said Aung. “Our plan is to work whatever the Red Planet throws at us the very same way we handled every challenge we’ve faced over the past six years – together, with tenacity and a lot of hard work, and a little Ingenuity.”
翻译：
一旦团队准备开始尝试首飞，”毅力号“将接收到喷气推进实验室任务控制人员的最终飞行指令并传递给“机智号”。主要有几个因素来决定飞行的准确时间，包括通过”毅力号“上火星环境动力学分析仪（MEDA）测量的数据并结合局部风场模式模型得到的结果。“机智号”将运转到2537转/分钟，如果最后自检的情况还算不错，那就发射升空。在以每秒3英尺的速度爬升后，直升机将在离地面10英尺（3米）的高空盘旋30秒。然后，火星直升机将降落并重回到火星表面。
在首飞后的几个小时，”毅力号“将下链（从太空或飞行器接收信号的通讯方式）到“机智号”的第一组工程数据，可能还有来自探测器的导航摄像头以及桅杆相机的图像和视频。根据飞行后第一个晚上传回的数据，火星直升机小组希望能够确定他们第一次在火星上飞行的尝试是否成功。
在接下来的火星日中，所有余下在飞行过程中收集到的工程数据，以及一些来自直升机自身导航相机的低分辨率黑白图像，都会逐步下链到喷气推进实验室。第三个火星日阶段，应该能收到直升机的高分辨率彩色照相机拍摄的两幅图像。火星直升机小组将利用所有可用的信息来决定何时以及如何进行下一次测试。
“火星任务很艰难。” Aung 说。“我们的计划是，无论这颗红色星球给我们带来什么样的难题，我们都将以相同的方式来应对所面临的每一个挑战——正如过去六年来的同心协力、坚韧不拔、勤奋努力，再加上一点点的独创性（Ingenuity）。”
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While Ingenuity will attempt the first powered, controlled flight on another planet, the first powered, controlled flight on Earth took place Dec. 17, 1903, on the windswept dunes of Kill Devil Hill, near Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. Orville and Wilbur Wright covered 120 feet in 12 seconds during the first flight. The Wright brothers made four flights that day, each longer than the previous.
A small amount of the material that covered one of the wings of the Wright brothers’ aircraft, known as the Flyer, during the first flight is now aboard Ingenuity. An insulative tape was used to wrap the small swatch of fabric around a cable located underneath the helicopter’s solar panel. The Wrights used the same type of material – an unbleached muslin called “Pride of the West” – to cover their glider and aircraft wings beginning in 1901. The Apollo 11 crew flew a different piece of the material, along with a small splinter of wood from the Wright Flyer, to the Moon and back during their iconic mission in July 1969.
翻译：
当“机智号”试图在另一个星球上进行首次动力控制飞行时，让我们回到地球上第一次动力控制飞行的时间。那是发生在1903年12月17日，北卡罗来纳州基蒂霍克附近的杀魔丘（Kill Devil Hill）的风沙垄上。在这次首飞中，莱特兄弟在12秒内飞行了120英尺。莱特兄弟在当天总共进行了四次飞行，每次飞行时间都比之前长。
莱特兄弟的飞机名为“飞行者”（Flyer），在它首飞过程中覆盖在其中一个机翼的少量材料现在已经放在了“机智号”上。它位于直升机的太阳能电池板下面，通过绝缘胶带在电缆上包裹住了一捆布样 。那是一种名为“西部骄傲”的细棉布——莱特兄弟从1901年开始就使用这种材料来覆盖他们的滑翔机和飞机机翼。1969年7月，阿波罗11号的宇航员在他们众所周知的任务中，带着莱特兄弟“飞行者”上的一小块木头，飞向月球，然后返回地球。