Ingenuity CAD Model AE 140: Introduction to CAD | Fall 2022
As a final project for the freshman year CAD course, we were tasked with choosing an aerospace vehicle to model and present on. All modeling and rendering was done in Siemens NX. For my vehicle, I chosen NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, which accompanied the Perseverance Rover on its journey to Mars in 2020. In 2021, Ingenuity made history, completing the first powered, controlled flight on another celestial body.
Ingenuity immediately called to me as the right vehicle to research and model. I’ve always been fascinated by interplanetary missions and the science they enable, as well as the many novel applications flight allows for on Earth. Naturally, the first aircraft to fly on another planet drew my attention. Even though Ingenuity was only a demonstrator, it has opened the door to future flying rovers on interplanetary missions, with one such future mission being Dragonfly to Saturn’s moon, Titan.
The modeling process involved a lot of guess work on my end. NASA provides 3D models of many spacecraft (including Ingenuity) to view on their website, but these models don’t include any detailed dimensions. For my model, I worked from the known dimensions of the helicopter’s rectangular prism fuselage, its propeller diameter, and overall height. These known dimensions proved useful as references to create a scale for screen shots of each side of the aircraft. From there, unknown dimensions were able to be estimated from the scale and measurements. The propeller dimensioning was almost entirely guess work, as nothing other than the diameter was publicly available. In addition to the renders, we also created videos within NX featuring moving components. You can see this video below.