Mars Helicopter Finally Makes Contact After Two Months of Silence (gizmodo.com) 26
JoeRobe writes: After 63 days of agonizing silence, NASA's Martian chopper finally phoned home. The Ingenuity helicopter reestablished communication with mission control on June 28, officially logging its 52nd flight as a success, NASA recently announced. The space agency lost contact with Ingenuity as the helicopter was descending towards the surface of the Red Planet following its most recent flight on April 26.
The reason behind the communication drop was that a hill was inconveniently positioned between Ingenuity and its rover pal Perseverance, preventing the Martian pair from communicating with one another. Ingenuity relies on Perseverance to deliver its messages to Earth, using shiny antennas to exchange data at about 100 kilobits per second. The data is routed from the Ingenuity-facing antenna to the rover's main computer before being transferred to Earth by way of an orbiting spacecraft.
The reason behind the communication drop was that a hill was inconveniently positioned between Ingenuity and its rover pal Perseverance, preventing the Martian pair from communicating with one another. Ingenuity relies on Perseverance to deliver its messages to Earth, using shiny antennas to exchange data at about 100 kilobits per second. The data is routed from the Ingenuity-facing antenna to the rover's main computer before being transferred to Earth by way of an orbiting spacecraft.
100 kilobits per second (Score:4, Funny)
And I was so excited to get my first 2400 baud modem. Didnâ(TM)t have to worry about hills though.
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Furthermore, what happened to the hill? Did it just move away?
Re:100 kilobits per second (Score:5, Funny)
Clearly Mars rotated so that the hill was no longer between the two devices.
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Perseverance obliterated it with its laser. The laser is only meant for sampling rocks, though, so it took a while to get through.
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And I was so excited to get my first 2400 baud modem.
2400 baud is 2400 bits per second. The appropriate speed comparison would be a 56k modem or a 2G EDGE data connection on your mobile phone.
Re: 100 kilobits per second (Score:5, Insightful)
You might want to look up the definitions of "baud" and "bits per second". They do not mean the same thing, although many who don't know better seem to think so.
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https://lucidar.me/en/serialib... [lucidar.me]
But I see in the context of modems [wikipedia.org], apparently even 19.2kbps modems were 2400 baud.
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And I was so excited to get my first 2400 baud modem.
2400 baud is 2400 bits per second. The appropriate speed comparison would be a 56k modem or a 2G EDGE data connection on your mobile phone.
2400 bit per second modems used V.22bis which was actually 600 baud with QAM to transfer 4 bits per baud.
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I used to have so much fun whistling to see if I could get a CONNECT 2400. Highest I ever got was a 600.
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I had Zoom 19200 modem. My friend and I would send files back and forth, and to start talking again we'd just pick up the phone and that would cause enough line noise to cause the call to drop, unless that bastard started whistling at my modem, and then I'd have to +++ATH my modem because it wouldn't give up trying unless he stopped.
Yay! (Score:5, Funny)
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Little F'ker has got to be the ultimate demo.
Also, good illustration of having a small, dedicated, team focused on a single outcome without management, marketing, sales, etc. constantly getting in the way. Here's your budget, here's your goal - you figure it out.
Re: An inconvenient hill that was there for centur (Score:5, Informative)
in better article it is explained the helicopter and rover have been in out and then back in communication after its landings many times because the terrain is rough. When the rover moves it gets back into line of sight. This was just longer than usual gap of time for this hill, the rover is slow.
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It all sounds a bit silly to me.
Yeah, that's because you're too dumb to realise that these very smart people know what they're doing.
Not very nice (Score:5, Funny)
The silent treatment is the worst, but also very immature.
Data transfer protocol (Score:5, Insightful)
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Suspicious.... (Score:1)
Bet there was some intervention and modification hapening behind the hill....
It's now a trojan whirly-bird, coming for our precious whiskey
Ingenuity uses shiny antennas to exchange data (Score:2)
Does the shininess have anything to do with the data rate?
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Came to say pretty much this. Even for a story that's pandering to a non-tech audience, that "shiny" seems truly cringe-worthy.
Surprising... (Score:2)
...that they're using a wavelength that's vulnerable to that sort of interference. Almost as bad as if they were trying to use a laser rather than radio.
A Hill! (Score:1)