I believe we can now reconstruct the last moments of #Ingenuity's #Flight72 with some certainty. The actual trajectory may be a little more complicated, e.g. turning while hopping, but we'll never know.
EDIT: there is a new theory about Flight 71, see comments.
Animation
Processed MCZ_RIGHT, FL: 110mm
looking NNE (16°) from RMC 52.0000
Sol 1130, LMST: 16:19:24
@stim3on
The team said the heli was flying at an angle. Presumably that meant flying under power, not just dropping under gravity. So, being powered, flying at an angle and hitting the ground at high velocity, is about as chaotic as it could get.
But the new theory sounds much more interesting, and also explains why we can't find the marks from the #Flight71 landing. My previous hypothesis for FLight 71 has it 50m to the east, while this one is just 1~2m to the west.
I like it a lot.
There is very little known about #Flight71, the one that preceded the final, both in details about the flight itself but also about its troublesome landing and its exact location. #Ingenuity's flight log does not yet list distances. AFAICT it has been assumed to be ~10m east of landing 72. Images that just arrived show nothing visible in that area, though they show what seems to be a recent disturbance ~50m ENE. More images are obviously needed 2b sure.
There are some new marks visible on the regolith ripple, that were previously hidden behind the crest. This will definitely change the way the #Flight72 landing events have been interpreted by the #MarsHelicopter team.
Zoomed-in, processed MCZ_RIGHT, FL: 110mm
looking E and down from RMC 51.2578
Sol 1110, LMST: 12:02:00
@stim3on
We need more SUPERCAM images from all those places as well as the other one related to the unverified landing location of #Flight71. I'm sure they'll do their best to investigate this, both for science and for … prestige, it being the first forensics investigation ever done for a spacecraft by another spacecraft from the ground of another planet 😀
@Undertow
So #Flight71 was indeed very problematic; it came down with a lateral speed of 1m/s, which explains what we saw in the RTE image from that flight.
#Ingenuity's landing location after #Flight71. Deep marks visible where the front right foot would be, as well as a reflection of the sun or the sky at the center.
Processed, undistorted, rotated HELI_RTE
Image captured from RMC 71.0001/0
Sol 1025, LMST: 15:25:53
Here is a timeline of my posts wrt the events of #Ingenuity's #Flight71 & #Flight72, dissecting publicly available information and images, for those who want to follow the events:
#Ingenuity landed #Flight71 in an emergency. How that landing went we can only guess from the only three images we have seen so far, all captured from the ground.
The above RTE image has a sequence number of 0, meaning it was the first RTE image captured in #Flight71; since it was captured from the ground after landing, it also means that there were no RTE images captured during the flight.
While dissecting #NASA's status update on #Ingenuity (https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter/status/509/ingenuity-reestablishes-communications/), one observes the following:
• Quality of communications, i.e. good or marginal, is not reported.
• Visibility plots suggest that the #MarsHelicopter should be in deep radio shadow, a fact that would make signal loss probable; but such an expectation is not mentioned. Instead it was reported earlier that comms "terminated early".
• The report does not hint on a correlation between
the two consecutive failures, i.e. #Flight71's emergency landing and #Flight72's early termination of comms.
• JPL's post on X, that the team was considering moving the rover closer for a "visual inspection" of the heli, sounded more like a postmortem action than like something they would do to bring it back to service, e.g. improve radio signal.
• "Power positive" is assumed to mean that #Ingenuity has not "browned out" at night, but has kept its clock running. But
The helicopter was already out of sight and at a distance of ~1km, as seen in the map below. There is an obstructing mound about midway that rises 13m above the line-of-sight, which might be the reason for the loss of signal. Despite that, assuming Ingenuity's landing software worked as usual, the helicopter may be in good health, but
I don't know whether those images were downlinked directly from the helicopter or were stored in the rover for some time. This procedure is still not clear to me, and it may be different every time. So comms being OK up to flight 72 may not be the case. Too many unknowns.
Images from #Ingenuity's #Flight70 have started pouring in. This one shows the area where the #MarsHelicopter did an emergency landing during #Flight71, and a posible location for that, guessed from the laconic announcement of JPL on X.
Map follows.
Processed HELI_RTE image captured from RMC 70.0001/4
Sol 1009, LMST: 10:15:09
This first image from #Flight71 let's us know that #Ingenuity ended up landed on its feet, but if one looks closer, there is a groove on the regolith that looks very fresh. It seems as if something hit the ground in a way never seen before.
1/2
Processed, undistorted HELI_NAV
Image captured from RMC 71.0001/26
Sol 1027, LMST: 10:11:02
The angled shape of the propeller blade's shadow on the upper left corner of the image in the post above indicates a possible landing half way on a regolith ripple crest, which could also explain why some part of the heli may have hit the regolith, or a leg dragged on the ground.
Indeed, this previously posted map shows a possible landing location, according to the flight log, very near to the crest of a regolith ripple.
#Ingenuity's 71st landing appears to be the worst so far. Both this and the previous image from #Flight71's emergency landing show deep fresh grooves in the regolith beneath the copter, some barely visible at the top that I didn't notice earlier, most probably dug by some part of the heli hitting or dragging on the ground.
Processed, undistorted HELI_NAV
RMC 71.0001/84
Sol 1027, LMST: 10:12:49
According to the helicopter's flight log, #Ingenuity flew #Flight71 on Jan 6, but went for only 71m instead of 358m that was the plan, 35s instead of 125s. The flight log shows landing at the same airfield Chi. There is no further info available at this time about what happened and about the condition of the heli.
NOTE: The log contains the only reference to the flight date timezone that can be found, AFAICT, seen here at the bottom of the image.