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A photograph of NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter taken by the Perseverance Rover on August 2. | Source: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS
NASA’s Mars Ingenuity Helicopter has accomplished its first flight since its unscheduled touchdown throughout its July 22 flight. The most up-to-date flight, Ingenuity’s 54th on the planet, was a 25-second up-and-down hop meant to offer the Ingenuity group some perception on why the helicopter’s 53rd flight was lower brief.
Flight 53, the one which Ingenuity needed to finish abruptly, was deliberate to be a 136-second scouting flight to gather photos of the Martian floor for the Perseverance rover science group. The flight would come with flight north for 666 ft (203 meters) at an altitude of 16 ft (5 meters) at 5.6 mph (2.5 meters per second), the place it might hover and procure imagery of a rocky outcrop.
After that, Ingenuity was imagined to go straight up 33 ft (10 meters) to permit its hazard divert system to provoke. It would then descend vertically to the touch down.
In actuality, Ingenuity was solely in a position to fly north for 466 ft earlier than its flight contingency program was triggered and the helicopter landed mechanically after a complete flight time of 74 seconds.
“Since the very first flight we have included a program called ‘LAND_NOW’ that was designed to put the helicopter on the surface as soon as possible if any one of a few dozen off-nominal scenarios was encountered,” stated Teddy Tzanetos, group lead emeritus for Ingenuity at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “During Flight 53, we encountered one of these, and the helicopter worked as planned and executed an immediate landing.”
The Ingenuity group believes that this early touchdown was triggered by picture frames from the helicopter’s navigation digital camera not syncing up appropriately with knowledge from Ingenuity’s inertial measurement unit, which measures its acceleration and rotational charges.
Data from the inertial measurement unit permits NASA to estimate the place the helicopter is, how briskly it’s transferring, and the way it’s oriented in area.
This identical drawback occurred initially of Ingenuity’s life on Mars on its sixth flight on May 22, 2021. Ingenuity skilled extreme pitching and rolling in the course of the flight as a result of a number of picture frames had been dropped.
After this incident, the Ingenuity group up to date the helicopter’s flight software program to assist mitigate the affect of dropped photos, which labored, up till Flight 53. During that flight, the variety of dropped navigation photos exceed what the sooner software program patch allowed.
“While we hoped to never trigger a LAND_NOW, this flight is a valuable case study that will benefit future aircraft operating on other worlds,” stated Tzanetos. “The team is working to better understand what occurred in Flight 53, and with Flight 54’s success we’re confident that our baby is ready to keep soaring ahead on Mars.”
Ingenuity touched down on Mars in April 2021. The helicopter was the primary ever helicopter to be despatched to a different planet. It was despatched as a know-how demonstration to check the primary powered flight on Mars. While the helicopter has been flying robust for over two years now, NASA’s group doesn’t anticipate it to final ceaselessly.
NASA has been so inspired by Ingenuity’s success that it determined to swap out its Sample Fetch Rovers for 2 drones, just like the helicopter, to function backups to the Perseverance Rover within the Mars Sample Return Campaign.