Project:	Skyfall Mars Helicopter Aerial Validation Test Team (JPL AO No. 16721)
Disciplines:	Aerospace Engineering, Control and Dynamical Systems
Mentor:	Laura Jones-Wilson, (JPL), Laura.L.Jones@jpl.nasa.gov, Phone: (818) 914-9393
Background:	Skyfall is a concept by which Ingenuity-class Mars helicopters make it to the martian surface by way of ejecting from a structure attached to a parachute and performing an extreme pullout maneuver under their own power before performing a soft landing. This maneuver - which can involve speeds of over 40 m/s - pushes the envelope on structural, aerodynamic, and flight dynamics for vehicles on Mars but would prove to be hugely enabling to exploration and science missions that would benefit from aerial assets on the Martian surface. However, proving that the vehicle can tolerate the loads and conditions of the Skyfall maneuver while maintaining vehicle control requires sophisticated simulations validated against test data from relevant physical regimes. The Aerial team helps to pull together these simulations and datasets across aerodynamics, flight dynamics and controls, and navigation/perception subdomains.
Description:	The Skyfall team is ramping up their simulation and maneuver design fidelity and is looking to collect validation data (likely from an aerodynamically scaled test campaign) as well as improved fidelity simulations (computational fluid dynamics, multi-body physics simulators, etc) for these low-Reynolds, near-transonic regimes. Support is sought in a variety of tasks to supplement our guidance, control, navigation, and dynamics experts as we design the experiments and simulation sets, build and test experimental hardware, run experiments, process data, analyze simulation results, and interpret results into the implications for the maneuver.
References:	https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqAuPq3_XRs, https://science.nasa.gov/mission/mars-2020-perseverance/ingenuity-mars-helicopter/
Student Requirements:	Strong academic background in any of the following: aerodynamics, flight mechanics, fluid dynamics, robotics, computational fluid dynamics simulations, helicopter/drone flight mechanics. Comfortable programming in embedded systems (RaspPi etc) helpful for some aspects of the roles. Experience with test design, data processing, data collection, and synthesizing results helpful, especially in comparing CFD results to experimental data. Experience in the lab building hardware or building simulations helpful.
Location / Safety:	Project building and/or room locations: . Student will need special safety training: .
Programs:	This AO can be done under the following programs:   Program    Available To        SURF@JPL    both Caltech and non-Caltech students  Click on a program name for program info and application requirements.