Follow Slashdot stories on Twitter

 


Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
×
Mars NASA

NASA Thinks It Knows Why Ingenuity Crashed On Mars (universetoday.com) 45

Posted by BeauHD from the aircraft-accidents dept.
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."

NASA Thinks It Knows Why Ingenuity Crashed On Mars More | Reply

NASA Thinks It Knows Why Ingenuity Crashed On Mars

Comments Filter:
  • And mistakes and accidents will occur. Don't let the slings and arrows of mockery from late night comedians and know-nothing populist congressmen stop or discourage these efforts. My 2Â

    • If you think that's bad, look at how social media reacts to every starship flight. I think it was flight 4 when some derp here said something like "it's obviously time for Elon to hand over the reigns of SpaceX because I hate his politics and my feelings matter!"

  • 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.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      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.

    • Its a tiny lightweight thing with limited resources?

      • You'd be surprised - there's a commercial solution for drones that's 110g and uses less than 2W @ 5V.

        To be fair, I think that's over 6% of Ingenuity's mass, but while making a radio altimeter system for Mars might add even more mass for reliability, I would have some faith in the boffins involved that they'd make a package that was overall less massive. For one thing, they wouldn't need as much altitude or velocity range.

        As for power consumption, that's a small fraction of its rotor motor's power needs. I

        • The reality is that this first-of-its-kind Mars Helicopter accomplished way more than it the initial proof of concept it was designed for. It ended with a real-world test to failure and lessons learned. This little copter is amazing, historic even, and sets the stage for what is to come.

          If you can do better, please do because we all benefit.

          • >If you can do better, please do because we all benefit.

            If simply discussing things rustles your jimmies and you are compelled to virtually fellate engineers who will never even know you exist, perhaps a social media discussion forum is too much your your delicate sensibilities.

            You can do better, for you and everyone else, by leaving and not coming back to a place where you can't handle basic civilized discussion.

            • Please, show us the way. I'm being serious. It is not about putting anyone on a pedestal. It is about recognizing the accomplishment for what it is, and for what it was designed to be.

              Mankind benefited from this experiment. Coming from a place of humility, seriously, if you can provide such benefit to mankind then please do. We'll be sure to armchair the situation when your shit fails badly, because space is hard and your shit will fail there as everything we've sent to space has.

    • It's not that hard - Jan-Michael Vincent was too drunk to fly that day. Also, he was dead.

      • 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]? :-)

    • Adding a radar set to Ingenuity would have added to its mass. Probably not enough to matter when you're sending it up to Mars, but possibly a problem when the helicopter was trying to fly in Mars' thin atmosphere. Using the object recognition, which they already had, avoided that potential problem at no further cost.

  • Bizarre. (Score:4, Interesting)

    by jd ( 1658 ) <imipak AT yahoo DOT com> on Saturday December 14, 2024 @11:00AM (#65013047) Homepage Journal

    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.

    • 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:4, Informative)

      by caseih ( 160668 ) on Saturday December 14, 2024 @11:11AM (#65013069)

      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:Bizarre. (Score:5, Insightful)

      by joe_frisch ( 1366229 ) on Saturday December 14, 2024 @12:35PM (#65013193)
      Keep in mind the insanely tight weight budget. No only does the drone need to be delivered to the mars surface, but it needs to fly under its own power. Grams matter and a laser ranging system needs optics, heat sinks etc., all space qualified. Also keep in mind that the laser isn't enough - it detects a single height, but the camera is still needed to look for large rocks and other obstructions that might damage the helicopter

      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!

      • 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. :)

        • The insight helicopter is 700 grams and has to fly at an atmospheric density that is the equivalent of 110,000' on earth, so the blades are much larger than for a terrestrial drone, and weigh a lot more. Also mars atmosphere is cold and higher molecular weight than earth, so speed of sound is lower, which limits the blade tip speed.

        • Re: (Score:2)

          by caseih ( 160668 )

          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

    • 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

      • How many cameras does it have, and how far apart are they? I ask because if they're far enough apart they can be used as an optical range finder, like navies used back in WW I. It doesn't need any more equipment except, possibly, something that can compare two images and measure the difference in the position of the target on the two of them. You know how far apart the cameras are, so that gives you the distance right there.
        • This wouldn't work if the two images were identical, which would be the case for "featureless" sand ripples. Also, all y'all are suggesting solutions to a problem which is now known to exist, which was not known previously. Which is the point of exploration and experimentation.
          • How well it would work would depend on just how featureless that sand was, which would in turn depend on how good the resolution of the cameras was. And, if you were preparing for a follow-up mission, you'd probably use the best resolution you could manage. And yes, I'm taking advantage of what we now know about Mars, because I'm thinking ahead for the next mission.
  • simply point a couple of lasers straight down to make a simple visual altimeter - just like the dam-busters did. You're welcome NASA.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by el84 ( 10322963 )
      I know the dam-busters didn't have lasers - but the principle is the same with search lights.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward
      I'm glad you're here to figure this out and set NASA straight.
    • Probably it was a power issue. Lasers require a good bit of power and that might have been beyond the capacity of the power system. Flying in such thin air after all undoubtedly required a lot of power and there might not have been enough capacity for a laser system.

      • Re: (Score:1)

        by el84 ( 10322963 )
        laser pointers don't use much power - especially if you flash them on and off. No charge for that either NASA.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by caseih ( 160668 )

      Oh you're right. We didn't even think of that! doh! Thank you, slashdot!

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by ceoyoyo ( 59147 )

      That would certainly help with the issue, which was lateral velocity.

  • because it hit the ground too fast.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by caseih ( 160668 )

      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)

    by caseih ( 160668 ) on Saturday December 14, 2024 @11:23AM (#65013091)

    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.

  • Yeah, that stuff I keep being told is smarter than me.

  • Aliens (Score:2)

    by Lumpy ( 12016 )

    It was Aliens. They were out there raking the sand making it all smooth.

  • "...was designed to visually track surface features using a camera pointed at the round."

    Usually pointing a camera at the round gets you arrested.

  • n/t

Slashdot Top Deals

"Pok pok pok, P'kok!" -- Superchicken

Close