The Ingenuity helicopter paved new floor (air?) in April 2019, when it communicated data of its first flight—the first powered, controlled flight on another planet—to NASA scientists on Earth.
However now, it appears Ingenuity isn’t inquisitive about speaking with its engineering staff in any respect; as of late, the Mars helicopter has solely communicated with NASA scientists intermittently and unpredictably.
The communication breakdown is making it troublesome for the Ingenuity staff to information the craft across the Martian panorama—and crucially, each inside vary however safely away from the Perseverance rover, the true star of the Mars 2020 program.
In line with a status update written by Travis Brown, Ingenuity’s chief engineer, the communication issues began in earnest following Ingenuity’s forty ninth flight on April 2, 2023, which set information for the rotorcraft’s top and airspeed.
Following downlink of knowledge from its forty ninth flight, the Ingenuity staff didn’t uplink directions for the rotocraft’s subsequent flight.
However the points with Ingenuity’s communication return farther, Brown wrote. Shortly after the rotorcraft’s fortieth flight in January 2023, Ingenuity started combating “brownouts”—intervals during which the chopper would slip into its low-power mode, which retains the craft alive throughout harsh winter nights on Mars. Final 12 months, a cold-induced low energy state gave NASA engineers a similar scare about the helicopter’s survivability.
It grew to become troublesome to foretell when Ingenuity would wake from these brownouts, in flip making it troublesome for the staff to coordinate the rotorcraft’s flights. All of the whereas, the Perseverance rover has been persevering with its procession throughout Jezero Crater’s western rim, investigating a dried-up river delta for areas of geological and astrobiological curiosity.
On Sol 755, the staff misplaced contact with the helicopter once more, and there was radio silence for the subsequent week (a Sol on Mars, or a single Martian day, is roughly 24 hours, 39 minutes, and 35 seconds lengthy). The staff started to contemplate the likelihood that Ingenuity had died. “In additional than 700 sols working the helicopter on Mars, not as soon as had we ever skilled a complete radio blackout,” Brown mentioned within the blog post. However on Sols 761 and 762, singular radio pings confirmed the spunky area helicopter endured.
The staff decided {that a} Martian ridge between Perseverance and Ingenuity was obstructing communications from the helicopter. Since Ingenuity has transitioned from a tech demo of flight on other worlds to a scout for Perseverance, which is charged with investigating the Jezero Delta, the helicopter has usually stayed in entrance of the rover’s projected path.
That made flight 50 an in depth shave for the helicopter staff. They managed to uplink flight directions to the rover as Perseverance approached it, attending to inside 262 toes (80 meters) of the helicopter.
Brown famous that mud on the helicopter’s photo voltaic panels means the cat-and-mouse sport might persist, as Ingenuity might wrestle to get energy. Hopefully the staff doesn’t encounter related buildup to that which ended the InSight lander mission late final 12 months.
More: NASA Apparently Needs a Second Babysitter for the Ambitious Mars Sample Return
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