26 FALL 2019 • POPSCI.COM by John Kennedy / photograph by Joe Toreno
family returned home when she was a toddler.
Growing up without much material wealth,
Aung often gazed at the starry sky, wondering
if we’re alone. “The less you have, the more
you think about those things,” she says.
Aung’s affinity for numbers led her to study
electrical engineering at her parents’ alma
mater, the University of Illinois at Urbana-
Champaign. As she was finishing her master’s
degree, a professor mentioned JPL’s work pro-
cessing weak signals from deep space. Aung
saw it as an opportunity to combine her love
of math, her fascination with space, and her
engineering skills in an ideal job.
She started her career working on the
Deep Space Network, NASA’s tool for com-
municating with spacecraft, then developed
guidance, navigation, and control systems.
JPL named her deputy manager of its auton-
omous systems division in 2013, and tapped
her to lead the Mars Helicopter team two
years later. “I was a natural fit,” she says.
The helicopter features a cubical fuselage
5.5 inches across, a pair of carbon-fiber rotors,
and a 13-megapixel camera. Six lithium-ion
batteries provide power. The rotorcraft com-
pleted a successful test flight in January 2019
and is slated for liftoff with the Mars 2020
mission in July of that year.
It will arrive on the Red Planet the following
February. Once deployed, the little bird will
let the sun charge its batteries before running
diagnostic tests and awaiting the order to fly.
Given the distance between Earth and Mars
and other considerations, Aung could have to
wait several hours before knowing whether the
craft heeded the command, because in space,
there are no quick answers. And no shortcuts.IN PROFILE / MIMI AUNGIT’S MORE THAN
JUST FLYING
ON ANOTHER
PLANET. IT WILL
OPEN DOORS TO
A WHOLE NEW
CLASS OF
EXPLORATION.”
—MIMI AUNGNASA hopes to prove the technology works well enough
to develop larger choppers that could collect samples,
perform aerial surveys, and even ferry cargo on future
missions. Such a machine could explore volcanoes and
lava tubes, fly through canyons, and investigate other
areas rovers can’t reach and probes can’t see.
“It’s more than just flying on another planet,” says
Aung, who oversees the helicopter’s construction and
testing at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “It will open
doors to a whole new class of exploration.”
The Martian atmosphere is 1 percent the density of
Earth’s, which makes flitting 9 to 15 feet above the surface
akin to flying at 100,000 feet here at home. To achieve lift,
the counter-rotating blades will spin at 2,300 to 2,500 rpm,
about five times faster than a terrestrial helicopter’s.
Sending the craft to the Red Planet tucked beneath the
Mars 2020 rover necessitates limiting the propeller to a di-
ameter of 4 feet. Given the physics of flying there, a rotor
that size can’t lift more than 4 pounds here on Earth.
Engineering challenges like that are what drew Aung
to JPL in 1990. Her fascination with space started when
she was a child in Myanmar. Although she was born in
the U.S., where her parents earned their doctorates, theMIMI AUNG WAS STILL A YOUNG GIRL WHEN SHE LEARNED A LESSON
that has defined her career at NASA. Struggling with a
math problem, she sought guidance from her mother,
who had a doctorate in the subject. She soon tired of
Mom’s long explanation and demanded a quick answer.
Aung vividly recalls the stern rebuke from the usually soft-
spoken woman: “Never, never ask me for a shortcut.” ¶ No
shortcuts. That’s a good rule for the electrical engineer
leading the team behind the first autonomous drone
destined for another world. When the Mars Helicopter
arrives on the Red Planet in 2021, it will make five increas-
ingly difficult flights and perhaps take some pictures.