Mars helicopter Ingenuity phones home, breaking 63-day silence
Mars helicopter Ingenuity phones home, breaking 63-day silence
Rugged terrain had kept Ingenuity from communicating with its robotic partner, the Perseverance rover.
I love how well this little aircraft has worked out. The official mission for it was to validate an idea - to conduct five flights to demonstrate that it was possible, so that future missions could potentially include a little scout drone that could fly ahead and help find routes through difficult terrain. Then it worked so well that they started doing that on this mission, too - they're past fifty flights now and have been using photos from Ingenuity to plan Perseverance's next moves. The team who built this little drone must be thrilled.
It really is amazing. Especially considering how thin the air is there and how fast the rotors have to spin to compensate. Along with how much dust there is, that has t caused any mechanical issues etc.
Add to that, they basically have to write a flight path program and let er rip and hope it returns correctly. How they even orient position and direction with a minimum 15 minute lag is crazy to me.
Some of these things are a challenge to me, with direct and immediate control of my drone (albeit there are more obstacles). But just not landing on a rock or kicking up a bunch of prop wash that harms the propellers is crazy.
It's a slightly clickbaity headline, since it suggests this was a worrying problem, as opposed to part of the plan.
the recent silent spell, which the two mission teams had expected: The rover had disappeared behind a hill from the helicopter's perspective, and it didn't come back into view until June 28.
So it flew out of range, landed, and has been waiting patiently for the rover to catch up since. Part of me was hoping it had been flying around on its own for the last two months, and had come back all excited to share what it had seen!
amazing little copter