Ingenuity helicopter The first flight to Mars was delayed, but NASA Red Planet teams remain busy with the larger mission of Perseverance.
The size of the car Rover perseverance has an ambitious agenda during its two-year primary mission to search for potentially ancient habitable environments and to pick up the most promising samples for a future mission to be transported back to Earth in 2031.
So as perseverance approached ingenuity to take footage of the drone’s final flight, the rover was far from idle. Shipments from official Twitter account shows that it stays put after driving 270 meters from the February 18 touchdown site to the aerodrome selected by the mission team. To stay busy during the delay, Percy studies the rocks at his feet.
Related: How to watch the first online Mars helicopter flight of ingenuity
“I am preparing to do some local science at the #MarsHelicopter observation point, while we wait for the first flight. I imagined some local stones,” the account posted on Twitter on Wednesday. You can view the latest downloaded images on this NASA website, which really shows quite a few images of nearby rocks, along with long-distance views of the Ingenuity helicopter.
Meanwhile, the ingenuity team is working on troubleshooting a high-speed rotation test of the rotor that did not produce the expected results on Friday (April 9). Anomaly pushed back the first time he flew, which was to be on Sunday (April 11). Ingenuity must fly alone because of the distance between Earth and Mars; in fact, this means that no one can “joystick” the drone, so the ingenuity team wants to proceed carefully before authorizing the helidron to fly.
The team spent the past weekend looking for a solution and found that “minor modification and reinstallation of Ingenuity flight control software is the most robust way forward,” officials at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) said. from California, which manages the technology demonstration mission wrote in an update Monday.
JPL has not yet set a new flight date and mentioned that it will take some time to submit software changes and validate them. The team has 30 Martian messengers (or 31 days on Earth) to take their ingenuity out at least once before the rover is scheduled to move on. Since the ingenuity remains healthy, JPL officials added that they are confident that the helicopter will fly before its window closes.
Perseverance, ingenuity and mission work in the first 100 crucial days in which JPL tries to make the most of the enthusiasm and adrenaline that accompanies a new landing on Mars. The controllers are temporarily works on “Mars time” and moving their programs forward about 40 minutes a day so that they are awake at the same time as the rover and the helicopter.
The helicopter’s mission to fly to Mars could, if successful, herald a new generation of flying explorers who could track rovers and people to look for travel routes or examine dangerous inaccessible terrain from land vehicles. Ingenuity could perform up to five flights on Mars, with the last (if it ever happens) expected to fly on unexplored ground in Jezero crater.
Follow Elizabeth Howell on Twitter @howellspace. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.