Mars Helicopter Ingenuity Spies Perseverance Rover During 54th Red Planet Flight (space.com) 31
During its 54th flight on Mars, NASA's helicopter Ingenuity captured an image of the space agency's Perseverance rover. Space.com reports: Perseverance is nearly out of frame at the top of the photo, which Ingenuity took when it was about 16 feet (5 meters) above the red dirt. Unlike previous sorties, the Aug. 3 flight wasn't a scouting run to aid Perseverance's science activities. It lasted just 24 seconds, reached a maximum altitude of 16 feet and covered no ground laterally, according to Ingenuity's flight log. The mission team designed this short and simple hop in an attempt to help understand what happened during Ingenuity's previous flight, which was cut short unexpectedly.
The mission team designed this short and simple hop in an attempt to help understand what happened during Ingenuity's previous flight, which was cut short unexpectedly. That July 22 sortie was supposed to last 136 seconds and feature several complicated maneuvers. However, Ingenuity stayed aloft for just 74 seconds, touching down after something triggered its "flight-contingency program." [...] Imagery from Ingenuity's navigation camera likely got out of sync with its inertial measurement unit, which helps the little chopper determine its position, speed and orientation. This also happened near the end of Ingenuity's sixth flight, back in May 2021. The mission team soon uploaded a software patch to deal with the issue, but that patch apparently couldn't handle what happened on Flight 53, NASA officials said in the statement. "Since the very first flight, we have included a program called 'LAND_NOW' that was designed to put the helicopter on the surface as soon as possible if any one of a few dozen off-nominal scenarios was encountered," Teddy Tzanetos, Ingenuity team lead emeritus at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, said in a statement.
"During Flight 53, we encountered one of these, and the helicopter worked as planned and executed an immediate landing," Tzanetos added.
The mission team designed this short and simple hop in an attempt to help understand what happened during Ingenuity's previous flight, which was cut short unexpectedly. That July 22 sortie was supposed to last 136 seconds and feature several complicated maneuvers. However, Ingenuity stayed aloft for just 74 seconds, touching down after something triggered its "flight-contingency program." [...] Imagery from Ingenuity's navigation camera likely got out of sync with its inertial measurement unit, which helps the little chopper determine its position, speed and orientation. This also happened near the end of Ingenuity's sixth flight, back in May 2021. The mission team soon uploaded a software patch to deal with the issue, but that patch apparently couldn't handle what happened on Flight 53, NASA officials said in the statement. "Since the very first flight, we have included a program called 'LAND_NOW' that was designed to put the helicopter on the surface as soon as possible if any one of a few dozen off-nominal scenarios was encountered," Teddy Tzanetos, Ingenuity team lead emeritus at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, said in a statement.
"During Flight 53, we encountered one of these, and the helicopter worked as planned and executed an immediate landing," Tzanetos added.
if... (Score:1)
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Pretty much true of almost everything... (Score:3)
Don't all electric cars orbit the sun? And all cars...
I must be missing something (Score:3)
What's so unexpected about Perseverance showing up in a video by Ingenuity?
Now let's say Viking 2 showed up in a video... that WOULD be a surprise.
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For a brief moment I thought this was because Perseverance was a different mission and this would have been the first time two man-made objects sent to Mars encounter one another. But no, Perseverance is the rover that actually brought Ingenuity to Mars. So yeah, basically it's as surprising as a teenager taking a selfie at home and seeing one of their parents in the background.
Re:I must be missing something (Score:5, Informative)
Ingenuity has two cameras [nasa.gov]:
Both cameras are down-facing (the color is tilted slightly forward). It doesn't have a steerable forward-looking camera like a consumer drone. So, for the most part, it can only see what it flies over.
Furthermore, the mission planners very consciously keep Ingenuity's flight path well away from the Perseverance rover. It's an unacceptable risk to have a $2bn mission ruined due to the helicopter crashing onto its mother ship.
So the only way that you get Perseverance into the frame is with a combination of flight altitude and proximity to the rover combining such that you just happen to get within the limited field of view. As far as I know, this has only happened a handful of times during the mission.
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I'm so glad that this happens. Even though we know Perseverance is there it somehow just seems more real seeing a picture of it sitting there on the surface from another perspective. Fascinating.
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Nowhere in the article is the word “unexpected” used.
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Let me rephrase, then - why is the appearance of Perserverance in an Ingenuity photo even remotely worthy of a headline featuring that fact?
Re:I must be missing something (Score:4, Interesting)
Remote controlling (and getting video from) a drone *on another planet* is pretty cool. Let's maybe let them have some attention for it?
I'd agree that this is unlikely to make the back pages of Hello Magazine, but come on, this is slashdot - if we can't appreciate looking at some awesome pictures of an awesome piece of engineering, taken by another awesome bit of engineering that is *flying on another planet*, then who can?
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Remote controlling (and getting video from) a drone *on another planet* is pretty cool. Let's maybe let them have some attention for it?
Oh, you'll get no argument from me on that - it's extremely cool. It just seemed like the headline focused on a trivial aspect of this which isn't particularly important or newsworthy.
Original (Score:5, Informative)
LAND_NOW (Score:2)
we have included a program called 'LAND_NOW' that was designed to put the helicopter on the surface as soon as possible
Is it a symlink to /sbin/poweroff?
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"In two miles, make an up turn and proceed 50 million miles."
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HCF! HCF!
I'm not saying it was aliens, but... (Score:1)
It was aliens.
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This is a rare occasion where that statement is actually true. Ingenuity and Perseverance are alien machines on Mars.
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But they live there now. I guess that makes them Martians.
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Illegal immigrants. I am just waiting for them to build a wall.
What happened again? (Score:3)
I'll be more excited (Score:2)
Can it get the dust off the rover (Score:2)
I have always wondered if NASA could somehow get the dust off the rover's solar panels... if Ingenuity flies over Perseverance, will it help get dust off the rover's solar panels - or would it make the problem worse - perhaps perseverance should drive away from any dust kicked up by the helicopter... Perhaps NASA should try it on earth and then replicate it on Mars.
Re:Can it get the dust off the rover (Score:4, Interesting)
I am not involved in any way with this project, but I have stayed at a Holiday Inn Express so can give a short answer.
The atmosphere of Mars is not dense enough for Ingenuity to produce any significant downwash, certainly not enough to clear away accumulated dust from the solar panels.
Also, there is the issue of static electricity. That dust clings more tightly to the panels than you think so simply blowing on it won't do much, if anything, to clean the panels.
The only thing which would work is spraying the panels with water. Now if you can figure out how to either lift a sufficient quantity to Mars (water weighs 7 pounds per gallon) and guide the cleaning craft to the same location as Perseverance to do the cleaning, OR figure out how to extract what little water is present on Mars and use it clean the panels, NASA would like ot hear from you.
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> I am not involved in any way with this project, but I have stayed at a Holiday Inn Express so can give a short answer.
Over-qualified for slashdot then ;-)
(thanks for the LOLs)
Perseverance isn't solar powered IIRC (Score:2)
Isn't Perseverance powered by an RTG, like Curiosity? Anyway, Earth dust and Mars dust are very different due to presence of water on Earth and much more atmospheric activity. It isn't always easy to test here.