Håvard Fjær Grip

He was sitting in an office chair. The aircraft was 173 million miles away. His logbook entry identifies it as an MH-1—Mars Helicopter One. Named Ingenuity, the four-pound featherweight has flown nearly two dozen times, propelled by twin coaxial rotors sculpted to generate lift in an atmosphere a hundred times thinner than Earth’s. Grip flies it not with a stick, but with a laptop: he encodes individual flight profiles for Ingenuity’s flight control C++ programming language, then relays them to Ingenuity through a circuitous process from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Grip was born in Norway and has a doctorate in engineering cybernetics. He moved to eastern Washington, where he bought a Piper Cherokee 140 to better explore the American West. Ever the scientist, he soon began adapting it for flight control research. In 2013 Grip joined NASA as a robotics technologist. He was quickly appointed Ingenuity’s aerodynamics and flight control lead. His hands-on Cherokee experience, plus deep knowledge both of programming and flight control law, made him an obvious choice for chief pilot.

How did you get started in aviation?

I was 29 and living in a rural part of Washington state. I got my private pilot’s license and then bought a Cherokee 140. It’s a beautiful airplane. Of course, it’s also underpowered, tricycle gear, low-wing—not exactly a backcountry plane, but there were some very cool strips I was able to visit anyway. That was an absolute blast. Then I realized that these recreational flights could mesh well with the research I was doing into navigation algorithms, so I installed a whole suite of sensors in the plane.

How were you selected to fly the helicopter on Mars?

I’ve done deep-level theoretical research in academia. But I also had practical experience from flying my Cherokee with sensors to obtain real-world navigation results. So being chief pilot seemed a good fit.

Did your pilot certificate and flight experience help you plan Ingenuity’s missions?

Absolutely. It taught me to use checklists. There is a flying mindset. You have tables, you compare performance to the environment you’re facing, and it makes the flight straightforward and rule based. Flight planning on Mars is like on Earth. There is a lot of prep work—weather, atmospheric density, terrain, waypoints, navigation, power management, and performance parameters.

What were your biggest challenges?

By far, it was understanding the physics of the helicopter flying in Mars’s thin atmosphere and how it would handle. We did years of modeling and simulation and experimental work on the ground to predict that. Now that we’re on Mars, our challenges are a little bit different; a lot
of it has to do with some of the limitations of the way the helicopter navigates, for example.

Advice for new pilots?

Find something you have the talent for and the interest in. Something you don’t mind spending vast amounts of time on. Don’t just do what’s required; go beyond that. Hobbies are a great starting point.