NASA has given the eager public a new date for the first controlled flight of the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars: Monday, April 19. This would be the third time that the Ingenuity flight has been rescheduled so far and, with any luck, could be the real deal.
Saturday, announced the space agency that ingenuity, his small 1.8-pound helicopter, would attempt to make its first flight Monday at about 3:30 a.m. ET. The new date follows two attempts that were delayed due to early verification checks and a command sequence problem that occurred during a high speed spin test of its rotors on April 9. That day, the test ended early due to the expiration of the “watchdog” timer as it tried to switch the flight computer from pre-flight mode to flight mode, NASA explained.
The ingenuity monitoring timer monitors the helicopter control sequence and alerts the system in case of problems. If there is a problem, the watchdog’s timer “helps the system stay safe” without continuing. Completing the rotation test is an important milestone on the way to ingenuity in flight.
The ingenuity flight crew had been working on a solution to this issue in recent days. One involved adding several commands to the helicopter’s flight sequence, while the other involved modifying and reinstalling the helicopter. flight control software. Friday, ingenuity successfully completed the top-speed spin test he hadn’t been able to complete on April 9th.
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To perform the spin test, the team used the flight sequence solution. The approach has been extensively tested on both Earth and Mars, the flight crew said in a statement. status update Friday and was carried out without compromising the safety of ingenuity, which cost $ 80 million and took years to develop. However, the team said it is still undecided what solution should be adopted for the first Ingenuity flight.
“Software exchange is a simple solution to a known problem,” the team wrote. “But it will take a little longer to perform and it is a software change that has remained stable and unchanged for almost two years. Validation and testing took several days, and transferring and uploading these new files will take longer. ”
In updating the status, the team said it will have a meeting on Friday to discuss both solutions and determine which of them would adopt for the first flight of ingenuity. The team did not guarantee that on Friday would agree on a new flight date, but judging by NASA’s announcement, this most likely.
The announcement did not reveal what solution the team finally adopted, although we will certainly find out in the coming days.
If the ingenuity is successful, it will be the first time that any space agency performs electrically controlled flights to another planet. The small helicopter will try to make up to five test flights in a window of 30 Martian or 31-day Earth messengers. Using the camera facing down, it will take photos during the test flight, and the team is expected to receive grainy black-and-white images at first and higher-resolution images later.
During previous press conference During the Ingenuity flight, NASA officials said that the Perseverance rover, which carried Ingenuity to Mars on its stomach, will also try to capture images of its friend’s first helicopter flight.
NASA will begin hosting a live stream at 6:15 a.m. ET on Monday, when the team will receive data from Ingenuity and find out if its first flight was successful. You can watch the live stream on YouTube below, as well as NASA application, website, and Facebook page. In addition, if the flight takes place, NASA will hold a post-flight briefing at 14:00 ET.