NASA Thinks It Knows Why Ingenuity Crashed On Mars (universetoday.com) 36
NASA believes Ingenuity's navigation system was responsible for its crash on the surface of Mars. Engineers determined that the helicopter's navigation system struggled to track features over smooth terrain, leading to a hard landing and structural failure. Universe Today reports: Now, almost a year after the incident, a team of engineers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory have been analyzing the data. Their findings will be published in the next few weeks however the team of engineers assert it was harder than expected to complete an accident investigation from 160 million kilometers. The faults lie in the navigation system that was designed to visually track surface features using a camera pointed at the round. The system worked during early flights over more textured terrain but as Ingenuity moved over the Jezero Crater, it began operating over featureless sand ripples.
The navigation system was designed to provide estimates of the helicopter's velocity, chiefly to enable it to land. The data revealed from Flight 72 revealed that the navigation system couldn't find features to track. Images showed that the lack of features led to a harder than usual touchdown leading to a pitch and roll of the craft. The sudden change of attitude led to increase load on the rotors, beyond their designed limits leading to the structural damage. "Even though Ingenuity will not be able to fly anymore it can still provide weather and avionics data to the Perseverance rover," notes Universe Today. "It will help us to understand more about the weather in its vicinity but perhaps its greatest legacy are its hours of flight on an alien world."
The navigation system was designed to provide estimates of the helicopter's velocity, chiefly to enable it to land. The data revealed from Flight 72 revealed that the navigation system couldn't find features to track. Images showed that the lack of features led to a harder than usual touchdown leading to a pitch and roll of the craft. The sudden change of attitude led to increase load on the rotors, beyond their designed limits leading to the structural damage. "Even though Ingenuity will not be able to fly anymore it can still provide weather and avionics data to the Perseverance rover," notes Universe Today. "It will help us to understand more about the weather in its vicinity but perhaps its greatest legacy are its hours of flight on an alien world."
One step at time... (Score:1)
Re: One step at time... (Score:2)
I don't understand the system (Score:2)
Object recognition for terrain following, sure, but why for velocity and ranging? Radar seems like the obvious choice for that, and it would work regardless of how smooth the terrain might be.
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If people were willing to drop everything and focus on healthcare we'd all have healthcare. And we wouldn't even need any Luigi Mangione to do it.
And yes, you too sound like someone who focuses on things other than healthcare, such as shitposting on Slashdot about how sad you are that a news for nerds site has posted news for nerds.
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I'm sorry you don't have healthcare, because you may be having a stroke.
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There are likely some problems using radar for lateral velocity measurements in a small, light and reliable enough package. Ingenuity's job was only to demonstrate that you could fly on Mars, and it was only expected to make five flights. It's a tech demo that hitched a ride with Perseverence.
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Its a tiny lightweight thing with limited resources?
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It's not that hard - Jan-Michael Vincent was too drunk to fly that day. Also, he was dead.
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It's not that hard - Jan-Michael Vincent was too drunk to fly that day. Also, he was dead.
So now there are only seven [fandom.com]? :-)
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Bizarre. (Score:3)
Laser range finding is trivial. You don't look at features to gauge distance from the ground, you measure it directly.
Speed, I can sort of understand, you need to measure the movement of something and the atmosphere is very thin, so points on the ground are easy.
If features are hard to spot, then the rest really three options - improve resolution so you can spot and track smaller variations, or improve the number of wavelengths examined, or the number of wavelengths differentiated - in either case, this is to be able to detect a wider number of things that can be varied.
These are all doable, but building them radiation hardened isn't trivial and the first and third will add to the weight, requiring a larger, heavier, and therefore more energy-hungry, drone.
Maybe build two types of drone - one for investigating, but a second one that acts as a mobile recharging station, so that your recon drone only needs minimal recharging capabilities.
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We should deploy GPS for Mars. Since we have to land stuff there to use it on the surface anyway, it could conceivably be a cheaper way to solve the problem.
Not so bizarre (Score:5, Informative)
One of the interesting things about the Ingenuity helicopter is that they used a lot of non-hardened, off-the-shelf parts. Was an interesting experiment to see how long electronic parts that weren't especially hardened would last in a harsh environment. Also no one was quite sure about the flight characteristics of the helicopter on mars. So weight was definitely at a premium and the lack of a range finder is understandable. They weren't even completely sure it would actually fly at all. And 90% of the time, cameras proved enough, which is pretty amazing. A range finder would have added weight and changed the flying characteristics of the helicopter. Now that they've collected a lot of flight performance data over 70+ flights (!) I'm sure future revisions will include additional hardware now they they know they can carry it.
But always interesting to hear expert armchair analysis.
Re:Not so bizarre (Score:5, Interesting)
I think this is actually going to be it's legacy: That building something with cheap non-hardened components can still work and do good science.
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You'll find my email address on early multicast roster changelogs. It's the one ending in larc.nasa.gov.
Re:Bizarre. (Score:5, Insightful)
The designers knew about laser ranging and presumably decided that the imaging landing system was good enough - and it was. They got a lot of flight time out of the drone - it was an amazing achievement!
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My entire pocket drone is 249g and has a reflective altimeter landing system.
Granted, Ingenuity is ancient compared to my drone.
We probably need faster, cheaper missions that launch within a year of design using accelerated simulations.
Standardize a Mars Landing System separately from a mission payload.
Maybe a Falcon Heavy could chuck a Falcon 9 towards Mars?
Ingenuity already found a nice smooth spot to land. :)
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No one was even sure it was actually possible to fly a drone (autonomously no less) on mars. It's nothing like flying here on earth. There're lots of things they could have done if they'd known it would work at all. Your little drone's range finder is almost certainly an acoustic range finder, not a laser range finder. There's no way it would work on mars. But earth-bound drone technology could indeed provide more interesting things to try on the next mission.
Getting a probe to mars is only part of the
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Laser range finding is trivial.
For one point, sure. But they're doing feature based VIO which gives positioning, and gives the depths for free. So, they could save on a whole laser rangefinder.
https://rpg.ifi.uzh.ch/docs/te... [ifi.uzh.ch]
If features are hard to spot, then the rest really three options - improve resolution so you can spot and track smaller variations, or improve the number of wavelengths examined, or the number of wavelengths differentiated - in either case, this is to be able to detect a wider number o
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why not ... (Score:1)
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Oh you're right. We didn't even think of that! doh! Thank you, slashdot!
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That would certainly help with the issue, which was lateral velocity.
Probably... (Score:2)
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I recognize the joke, but no that was definitely not the case here, which is what makes it so interesting.
The most interesting finding (Score:5, Insightful)
Initially when the pictures came back, it looked like the blades had snapped off when they impacted the soil as the heli landed and tipped as it slid down the slope. Anyone who's flown a model heli would have thought this because it would fit with our experience here on earth, especially when we saw the Ingenuity was resting on the side of a slope. But interestingly enough, NASA does not believe that happened. Rather as the heli pitched over abruptly when it landed (but never tipped over), the bending moment of the blades spinning at high rpm caused them to flex at about the 60% mark and snap the carbon fiber. One blade was thrown clear after it broke--perhaps a counter-rotating blade tip collided with it as it bent and snapped.
Anyway very interesting findings. Just goes to show our life experiences here on earth don't translate to other worlds with different gravity and air pressure, regardless of what our intuition tells us.
AI... (Score:2)
Yeah, that stuff I keep being told is smarter than me.
Aliens (Score:2)
It was Aliens. They were out there raking the sand making it all smooth.
Today's best typo (Score:1)
"...was designed to visually track surface features using a camera pointed at the round."
Usually pointing a camera at the round gets you arrested.