Adventures on Mars: 'Ingenuity' Helicopter Survives a Communications Blackout (nasa.gov) 22
The Mars helicopter 'Ingenuity' recently completed its 47th, 48th, and 49th flight, NASA reports on the blog for its Mars rover 'Perseverance'. That rover is making a "long ascent" up the delta in Mars' Jezero crater, "an area where scientists surmise that, billions of years ago, a river once flowed into a lake.
On its 47th flight, Ingenuity attempted "tactical and scientific scouting" for the rover, but "just narrowly missing the main area of interest." But then... Ingenuity's 48th flight produced a treasure trove of aerial images showing the exact area of interest at a resolution several orders of magnitude better than anything prior. All of these images were downlinked to Earth and provided to rover planners and scientists a full two weeks before the rover would reach this area... [T]he team chose to send the helicopter farther up the delta rather than perform additional scouting flights in the region... The Guidance Navigation and Control team once again managed to push the flight envelope with a 16-meter vertical popup at the end of the flight. At the peak, Ingenuity snapped the highest suborbital picture taken of the Martian surface since landing...
That downlink was the last time the team would hear from the helicopter for an agonizingly long time. Eager to continue up the delta, the team tried and failed to uplink the instructions for Flight 50 several times. Sol after sol, the helicopter remained elusive. Each time, the downlinked telemetry from the Helicopter Base Station (HBS) on the rover would come back showing no radio sign of the helicopter... When the rover emerged from the communications shadow on its way to Foel Drygarn and the helicopter was still nowhere to be found, the situation began to generate some unease... In more than 700 sols operating the helicopter on Mars, not once had we ever experienced a total radio blackout. Even in the worst communications environments, we had always seen some indication of activity...
Finally, on Sol 761, nearly a week after our first missed check-in, our communications team observed a single, lonely radio ACK (radio acknowledgement) at 9:44 LMST (Local Mean Solar Time), exactly the time when we'd expect to see the helicopter wakeup. Another single ACK at the same time on Sol 762 confirmed that the helicopter was indeed alive, which came as a welcome relief for the team. Ultimately, this first-of-its-kind communications blackout was a result of two factors. First, the topology between the rover and the helicopter was very challenging for the radio used by Ingenuity. In addition to the aforementioned communications shadow, a moderate ridge located just to the southeast of the Flight 49 landing site separated the helicopter from the rover's operational area. The impact of this ridge would only abate once the rover had gotten uncomfortably close to the helicopter. Second, the HBS antenna is located on the right side of the rover, low enough to the deck to see significant occlusion effects from various part of the rover...
Relying on the helicopter's onboard preflight checks to ensure vehicle safety and banking on solid communications from the rover's imminent proximity, the team uplinked the flight plan. As commanded, Ingenuity woke up and executed its 50th flight on the red planet, covering over 300 meters and setting a new altitude record of 18 m.
The rover had closed to a mere 80 meters by the time the helicopter lifted off in the Martian afternoon Sun.
And Flight 51 happened 9 days later...
On its 47th flight, Ingenuity attempted "tactical and scientific scouting" for the rover, but "just narrowly missing the main area of interest." But then... Ingenuity's 48th flight produced a treasure trove of aerial images showing the exact area of interest at a resolution several orders of magnitude better than anything prior. All of these images were downlinked to Earth and provided to rover planners and scientists a full two weeks before the rover would reach this area... [T]he team chose to send the helicopter farther up the delta rather than perform additional scouting flights in the region... The Guidance Navigation and Control team once again managed to push the flight envelope with a 16-meter vertical popup at the end of the flight. At the peak, Ingenuity snapped the highest suborbital picture taken of the Martian surface since landing...
That downlink was the last time the team would hear from the helicopter for an agonizingly long time. Eager to continue up the delta, the team tried and failed to uplink the instructions for Flight 50 several times. Sol after sol, the helicopter remained elusive. Each time, the downlinked telemetry from the Helicopter Base Station (HBS) on the rover would come back showing no radio sign of the helicopter... When the rover emerged from the communications shadow on its way to Foel Drygarn and the helicopter was still nowhere to be found, the situation began to generate some unease... In more than 700 sols operating the helicopter on Mars, not once had we ever experienced a total radio blackout. Even in the worst communications environments, we had always seen some indication of activity...
Finally, on Sol 761, nearly a week after our first missed check-in, our communications team observed a single, lonely radio ACK (radio acknowledgement) at 9:44 LMST (Local Mean Solar Time), exactly the time when we'd expect to see the helicopter wakeup. Another single ACK at the same time on Sol 762 confirmed that the helicopter was indeed alive, which came as a welcome relief for the team. Ultimately, this first-of-its-kind communications blackout was a result of two factors. First, the topology between the rover and the helicopter was very challenging for the radio used by Ingenuity. In addition to the aforementioned communications shadow, a moderate ridge located just to the southeast of the Flight 49 landing site separated the helicopter from the rover's operational area. The impact of this ridge would only abate once the rover had gotten uncomfortably close to the helicopter. Second, the HBS antenna is located on the right side of the rover, low enough to the deck to see significant occlusion effects from various part of the rover...
Relying on the helicopter's onboard preflight checks to ensure vehicle safety and banking on solid communications from the rover's imminent proximity, the team uplinked the flight plan. As commanded, Ingenuity woke up and executed its 50th flight on the red planet, covering over 300 meters and setting a new altitude record of 18 m.
The rover had closed to a mere 80 meters by the time the helicopter lifted off in the Martian afternoon Sun.
And Flight 51 happened 9 days later...
It's still in a blackout... (Score:5, Informative)
"uncomfortably close" (Score:1)
What does "uncomfortably close" mean here?
Re: (Score:2)
Re:"uncomfortably close" (Score:5, Insightful)
Indeed, uncomfortable for the rover or for the helicopter?
For the helicopter, obviously. In this situation, Perseverance would squash Ingenuity if something went wrong and the distances weren't measured properly.
If you look at the article, there is a picture of where the rover was and the general location of where Ingenuity was thought to be. In short, the rover had to come over a ridge to get close enough for reliable communication, but didn't know how far on the other side Ingenuity might be. If Ingenuity was just on the other side of the ridge when Perseverance came along, there might not have been any way to stop the rover from turning Ingenuity into scrap.
Re: (Score:1, Troll)
The rover doesn't do collision avoidance? Who knew it was made by Tesla?
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
The rover doesn't do collision avoidance? Who knew it was made by Tesla?
Ingenuity has to turn off its flashing lights [cbsnews.com] to be safe.
Re: (Score:2)
Being in the tech field (Score:5, Interesting)
Personally, I find it too easy to be blase about the absolute wonders that our technology represents. But every once in a while something like this comes along and reminds me what it was like to be a child with a fixation on electronics, building electromagnets and motors and crystal radios. It's good to feel that kind of wonder and excitement again at my age. Bravo Ingenuity, and congrats and thanks to all the engineers and techs who made it possible. Adventure and wonder indeed!
Re:Being in the tech field (Score:4, Interesting)
Indeed. Being familiar with the hobby of RC aircraft, I'm also in awe of what the team behind that little helicopter is doing and how well it is performing. It's hard enough to fly a model heli on earth in person when you can see it! Modern multi-rotor drones with flight stablizers make it easier, but even still you couldn't park one on the earth somewhere for a year or more and expect it to keep functioning, not crash, or get blown over by the wind on a landing.
I'm a little sad that here on slashdot the prevailing feeling towards this amazing feat is, meh. Sad state of affairs. Years ago this on-going story would have garnered significant interest.
Hummm (Score:2)
Re:Camera quality sucks (Score:5, Informative)
Do better, no one is stopping you. You realize that this helicopter was a proof of concept that we designed for a couple of short flights right?
It worked so well that they started using it more an more, now it is doing cool things that it wasn't really designed to do. This is a great accomplishment.
Things we design for space and send to space tend to have slightly out of date tech because it takes a long time to design and prepare for launch, and then a long time to reach a destination. You also have to consider the power budget of this little copter, high resolution images are going to use a lot more data which means a lot more radio transmission and power use.
So, go ahead and make your own other-planet-copter, send it to another planet, then show us your pictures.
Re: (Score:2)
They are on par with webcams from the early 2000s especially on resolution.
It has a 13.1 megapixel color camera for its terrain pictures. Maybe you were confused by its NAV camera which is just used for navigation which is 640x480 BW since several thousand NAV images need to stored during each flight.
Re: (Score:2)
Camera resolution is limited by:
- having to design the camera for the radiation and thermal environment of Mars, i.e. you can't use a consumer camera
- power limitations
- bandwidth limitations (Perseverance has a transmitter in the 10 W ballpark and has to transmit across millions of km)
Re: (Score:2)
you can't use a consumer camera
Yes you can. Ingenuity uses an off-the-shelf Sony IMX 214 smartphone camera.
Flight 51 out of 5, day 401 out of 30 (Score:2)
Go ahead, try to complain about the performance.
Ingenuity is really spectacular engineering (Score:2)
Here on earth, the official record altitude for manned helicopter flight is 41,000 feet, set over 50 years ago by Jean Boulet, a Frenchman.
Ingenuity is zipping around in the Martian atmosphere at about 115,000 feet equivalent.
Just stunning performance, without equal here on earth.
Strangely... (Score:2)
... the 45th and 46th flights were not completed.