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
New location RMC 51.3688 on Sol 1117. #Perseverance made up its mind and … followed my predicted route 🤓 😜 around the low rocky mound that lies to the southwest. #Ingenuity should be visible from this new location.
Processed, undistorted, leveled NAVCAM_LEFT
looking W (272°) from RMC 51.3688
Sol 1117, LMST: 13:45:18
#Ingenuity is indeed visible from the new location at RMC 51.3688. Especially the marks from its first bounce upon landing of #Flight72 should now be visible from a very favorable new angle, although of course not in this wide angle NAVCAM image.
Processed, leveled NAVCAM_RIGHT
looking NNE (24°) from RMC 51.3354
Sol 1116, LMST: 15:58:19
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
According to #Ingenuity's Chief Engineer Travis Brown (2h interview: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t4XpLZqc6ao), the plan for the heli after #Flight72 was to meet #Perseverance somewhere close to Bright Angel, a future science target for the rover. The rover would take some pictures of the heli from close range to document changes on the hardware that had occurred over the course of 3 years.
Brown also mentioned that Ingenuity's budget was running dry
NASA SpaceFlight #NSF had a very interesting live interview with Travis Brown, PhD, #Ingenuity's current Chief Engineer. Travis said that in spite of an original though/assumption that Ingenuity's rotors had hit the ground during landing of #Flight72, they now tend to believe that it was rather a very hard landing that damaged the rotors, since there is no evidence anywhere on the regolith of a blade hit.
For any analysis to be more than just a hunch, it must at least state what facts, assumptions, or calculations it is based on. Alternative hypotheses, when most of the actual evidence is unknown or can take different explanations, can make use of different or overlooked facts, and can offer grounds for their falsification.
A reworked hypothesis about #Ingenuity's last #Flight72 explained with an animation. It is based on a number of assumptions, most of which come out of #NASA's statements.
Animation explained in alt text.
Processed, cropped MCZ_RIGHT, FL: 110mm
looking NW (320°) from RMC 50.1534
Sol 1067, LMST: 10:27:39
disintegrating in mid air. From a 12m altitude, which was the planned altitude for #Flight72, the initial velocity would need to be only 7.23 m/s.
• The fact that the ejected blade appears to have bounced only once and came to a stop a short distance away from the point of impact suggests that its velocity when it bounced was not high.
All the above appear to suggest that the failure occurred at a higher altitude rather than on the ground. The fact that NASA knows it
@stim3on
(New Linux installation + 10 hours w/o internet, what else could possibly go wrong?)
It looks like they are trying new things every sol, which is good! In this fantastic image (pun intended for the algorithm 😜) we see indeed that the missing blade is an upper one, but how to id a symmetric blade that rotates randomly?
Interestingly, those upper blades should be, say, 15cm above the lower ones? Looks like it did either a loop or a roll, right before landing #Flight72 🙃
#Ingenuity managed to move its blades more this time, on Sol 1055. The team wants to assess the damage it suffered after the eventful #Flight72 that brought an end to its flying on Mars.
Animation
"We Are Not Dead Yet". Ingenuity team's moto, per Teddy Tzanetos, PM
Rotated for north up HELI_NAV
Image captured from RMC 72.0001/803
Sol 1055, LMST: 09:07:40
Another view of #Ingenuity from 450m afar, at its final landing after #Flight72. Its size in this 110mm MCZ image is a mere 30px, but it seems as if there are two gouges in the regolith, to the left of the heli, caused by its blades hitting the ground during landing.
Processed MCZ_LEFT, FL: 110mm
looking NW (320°) from RMC 50.0820
Sol 1052, LMST: 13:05:00
#Ingenuity will have the opportunity to possibly get a glimpse of #Perseverance at the upper right corner of a future RTE image, if the rover drives in one of the two highlighted areas, 550m and 1850m SW of the #MarsHelicopter's #Flight72 landing, as seen in the map below.
Another sol, another drive for #Perseverance. The rover is approaching the northern edge of the rocky Margin Unit, getting closer to where #Ingenuity is located after its eventful #Flight72, but it still has no line-of-sight to the #MarsHelicopter. It may be in a better position for a first look in a sol or two, as seen in the visibility plot below.
Here is a fresh animation of images captured by #Ingenuity from 06:06 to 09:17 AM tosol, Sol 1043, showing clearly that at least two of the 4 rotor blades were damaged during #Flight72.
14 processed HELI_NAV images
captured from RMC 72.0001/54
Sol 1043, LMST: 06:06 to 09:17
This animation shows one of the rotor blades before and after the #MarsHelicopter's 72nd landing. The fact that the image with the broken blade had to shrink and change perspective so much to match the other one is an indication of the RTE camera being much closer to the ground after landing 72.
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:
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
The animation below shows an approximation of radio coverage from ground level, 8m and 12m altitude. Even at the highest point in its #Flight72, the #MarsHelicopter was obstructed and had no LOS with #Perseverance.
The location of the helicopter is guessed.
However, there is one more factor that may be worrying about the physical condition of the heli, and that is the visible groove on the regolith beneath its body, that looks
#Ingenuity might be going through some hard times, it appears. Communications terminated early during #Flight72 just before touchdown, a (rare) postflight JPL status update says:
While waiting for #Flight72 scheduled for tosol (it's now 5:45 AM of Sol 1036, in Jezero), here is a quick rendering of the last RTE image captured by #Ingenuity right before it landed flight 70.
The map shows the locations where the 6 RTE images of #Flight70 were captured from.
Processed, undistorted HELI_RTE
Image captured from RMC 70.0001/5
Sol 1009, LMST: 10:15:17
#Ingenuity is ready for a pop-up #Flight72 up to 12m, on Sol 1036, so that the team (and we) can see where it ended up after its emergency landing. We'll also see those deep marks it made in the regolith and have something more solid to speculate upon.
@Undertow
Up and down flights don't need much navigation, so a featureless terrain doesn't matter for #Flight72, I think. If my suspicions about the marks on the regolith are any close to reality, then they'll relocate the heli too to a better location nearby. Why they don't say so is a mystery, but at least the Ingenuity team do announce their flights. Perseverance's team appear to have long given up on public engagement.