So this question arises: if the plan for #Flight53 was to scout and cover 203m of ground, why did it do a straight line flight of only 142m? Even if this is a preliminary localization, still the flight seems rather abnormal.
During the coming solar conjunction of Mars, and the moratorium in communications, #Ingenuity will use its color camera to study the movement of sand, which poses an ever-present challenge to Mars missions.
How does "The first robotic servicing mission on the surface of Mars" sound to y'all?
Well, if you're #NASA#JPL, this awesome headline could be yours for the low cost of a few nitrogen puffs!
This thread is just me fantasizing how Perseverance could potentially use its gDRT to clean the dusty solar panel and camera lens on Ingenuity and make history with this extraordinary servicing operation! 🧵
That sounds interesting but is quite risky, as the terrain is difficult and the rover would have to drive up into the Neretva riverbed, and across the regolith megaripple field to get a good visual of the heli, and that's assuming the #MarsHelicopter is still on the top of one of those megaripples.
The maps show visibility and terrain. Contours are 1m.
As I hoped before (https://mastodon.social/@65dBnoise/111823379796757059), he said that they are going to first wiggle the rotor and take a movie (!) of the action, and then slowly spin the rotors to bring the other two blades into view that haven't been visible so far and assess their condition.
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
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.
Mars helicopter Ingenuity during Flight 53 on July 22 performed an emergency landing!
The flight was planned for 203 meters but Ingenuity's ‘LAND_NOW’ software got triggered at the 142-m mark.
The Ingenuity team believes this was caused by loss of image frames from the helicopter’s navigation camera, which are sync'd up with data from the inertial measurement unit.
After a short test Flight 54 on Aug 3, Flight 55 (250-m) was planned for Aug 10/11.
#Perseverance moved to a new location on Sol 793, at RMC 39.1036, about 10m south of its previous location. Looks ready to climb that low hill and then onward to Mount Julian, where it will be able again to receive #Ingenuity's transmissions 🙂
This location estimate is based on metadata received with the few images downlinked so far. The white track shown is a guess based on the attitude of the rover.
#Ingenuity is flying #Flight65 AND 😯 #Flight66. That's right, two flights one after the other, the first today (in about 15 minutes), and the second on Thursday.
They are both short distance flights to reposition the heli, one 7m to the west, and the other 0.5m to the south. Can't even guess why those would be necessary 🤔. Feel free to speculate 😀
What's really exciting about the drive down the slope of the Neretva riverbank is that at some point along the way, maybe within a week or two from now, the rover will be visible by #Ingenuity's RTE camera, at the top right corner of an RTE image, as seen in this graphic by @stim3on where I marked a possible appearance with "future Perseverance".
• It invented a Mars Helicopter Scout program that doesn't exist
• It accepted as fact my statement that Ingenuity can fly as high as 50m
• It then detected I was contrdicting myself and making things up, but gave an old max altitude of 10m (it's 18m)
• It deactivated the account
On Sol 1100 #Perseverance drove 33m to a new location, 18m WSW, apparently trying to avoid a sandy patch south of the rocky top in front of it. It's now 373m away from #Ingenuity, but the #MarsHelicopter is still not in view.
Map follows.
Processed, undistorted, leveled, cropped NAVCAM_LEFT mosaic
looking from RMC 51.0644
Sol 1100, LMST: 15:52:25
Along with the HELI_NAV images we saw the other day (https://mastodon.social/@65dBnoise/111823678117141860) #Ingenuity also captured a series of early morning HELI_RTE images, showing the damaged blade shadow procession as the sun rose in the Martian sky.
Notice the slight change in focus and the moving reflection.
14 processed, undistorted, leveled images captured from RMC 72.0001/0
Sol 1043, LMST: 06:06:22
#Ingenuity is presently experiencing some of the coldest sols since last October, with max avg abt -25°C through the week but reaching as low as -28°C max during daylight on some sols.
The animation shows a few of the last flights of the #MarsHelicopter. It's notable that all those flights occurred during max temperatures around -20°C, which might explain why #Flight51 has most probably not taken place yet. #NASA's weather feed updates lag by a few sols
#Ingenuity's solly* exercise, here performed one hour later that on previous sols and in two different speeds. The first blade that moves is the one missing its half.
solly = daily, for Mars
Earth received: 2024-02-24 03:28:51Z
100 barrel corrected, rotated for north-up, processed HELI_NAV images
Sol 1069, LMST: 10:18:54
The PCBs that make up the Electronics Core Module (ECM) of #Ingenuity, the cube under the rotor blades. Here, spread out flat at an early stage of testing. All(most) Commercial Off-The-Shelf (COTS) devices, nothing special or radiation hardened etc.
From a presentation to the IEEE Microwave Theory and Techniques Chapter Meeting, July 19, 2018.
with some interesting notes about #Ingenuity's RTE camera.
The paper is about measuring regolith grain movements, but makes no reference to wind speeds/directions that caused those movements, as one might have expected.
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