The plucky little helicopter exploring Mars, NASA’s Ingenuity, has surpassed all expectancies and has lasted longer than even the maximum constructive predictions. Originally designed for as much as 5 flights, the helicopter is now gearing up for its nineteenth flight, a good way to be its first of 2022. But this flight won’t be easy, mainly given the problematic take-off it’s going to need to perform.
The nineteenth flight is scheduled to take vicinity today, Friday, January 7, and it’s going to observe a path from the helicopter’s contemporary area withinside the South Séítah basin, over a ridge, and up onto a plateau. This is just like a path the helicopter has flown previously, as it’s miles presently retracing its steps, however visiting withinside the contrary direction. Ingenuity is heading lower back in the direction of its authentic deployment web website online in which it and the Perseverance rover landed.
However, notwithstanding having traveled this path before, this flight may be tough. According to NASA, the helicopter is presently sitting in “featureless sandy terrain.” And even as that’s correct in a few ways – it makes it simpler to land while there aren’t any rocks to dodge – it makes it greater tough to take off. That’s because of the manner the helicopter’s navigation device works.
How the helicopter navigates throughout Mars
The navigation device makes use of a downward-going through digital digicam at the helicopter to photograph the floor under and makes use of those pics to accumulate a map of the surface. The device can then direct the helicopter to keep away from barriers like big rocks.
But on this case, while the helicopter is sitting on what might be taken into consideration a clean canvas, it method the navigation device may have a tough time distinguishing any functions at the floor. This brought about a few troubles while the helicopter landed on its preceding flight, and engineers are being cautious to make certain it doesn’t purpose any greater issues on the subsequent flight.
“[T]he place is without a doubt so with out rock that warnings had been pronounced for the duration of Flight 18 touchdown because of inadequate functions to music withinside the imaginative and prescient navigation,” Martin Cacan, Ingenuity Pilot on the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, wrote in a NASA weblog post. “As a result, fault safety parameters may be up to date to mitigate the danger of a untimely touchdown mid-ascent.”
Engineers expect that the nineteenth flight will final approximately a hundred seconds, and the helicopter will tour at round 1 meter consistent with second. It will cowl sixty three meters (206ft) and hit an altitude of 10 meters (33ft), yet again snapping snap shots because it goes.
