A pop-up to celebrate the landing of Ingenuity on Mars.
Idea
This was pretty easy to come up with, but the design took quite a bit of time. NASA used to have a 3D model of Ingenuity on their site, but it looks like only the helicopter is there now. But that was a great resource for designing the pop-up. I tried to make it as accurate as possible without getting too crazy.
Design
This is a 90° card and uses the parallelogram mechanism (FS7) for the main model, with a few tricky parts. The power supply on the right was hard since the top is not parallel with the main fold and it pivots as the mechanism unfolds. If you look carefully, you can see there’s a tab that guides the top of the power supply into place on the top of the rover as it stands up.
Since the left set of wheels hold up the entire model, it is doubled up with two layers of cardstock, which also gives extra detail.
The power supply, drill, and antenna are set back from the side of the model a bit using another parallelogram inside the main one. The mastcam-z (back left), and antenna (front mid right) are similarly parallelograms off the main one.
Below are the basic pieces of the rover before assembly. In the center you can see the piece that has the drill arm at one end and the power supply on the other. Note the curved tab on the power supply that guides the top of it into place as it rotates when the card is opened. On the right is the main part of the rover with slots cut for the power supply and antenna (lower right). The wheels on the main part are actually the right wheels, against the back of the card. The two separate sets of wheels are for the ones on the left side to give them extra strength since they have to hold up the main mechanism.
This is an image from the editor of all the pieces. Green ones are the main rover. Red are for all the applied pieces, most located close to where they are applied, so I could keep them straight. In all there are over 100 pieces applied to the mechanism to give it the detail such as wheel spokes, etc.
Cover
The cover’s background is pastels and the logo was cut by the machine out of colored paper.
Build
- 9” x 6”
- Since this required iteration and a high level of accuracy, it was designed on the computer and cut out with a Silhouette Cameo
- The base is Strathmore 300 Bristol 100lb, with pastel backgrounds and cut logo on the cover.
- The mechanism is Office Depot Bristol 100lb (but thinner than Strathmore)
- Dry brushed the model with pastels to give it a dusty appearance.