Video On Friday, NASA released footage of the Ingenuity Mars helicopter, which flies farther and faster than ever.
The film was recorded during Ingenuity’s 25th flight on April 8, when it flew 704 meters at speeds of up to 5.5 meters per second.
In the accelerated frames shown below, the vehicle climbs 10 meters, heads southwest, accelerates to top speed in less than three seconds and flies over Martian sand waves and rocky fields before landing on relatively flat terrain. .
Video on Youtube
The navigation camera is switched off when the propeller is within one meter of the landing to protect the navigation system from dust.
The flights were designed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which sends commands to the Perseverance Mars spacecraft, which in turn transmits them to Ingenuity. Ingenuity uses on-board sensors to provide real-time data to its own navigation processor and main flight computer, which then allows it to respond in real time.
On April 19, 2021, Ingenuity became the first aircraft to ever make a powered, controlled flight to another planet. He now has 28 fields under his belt, which means he has completed three fields from the April 8 footage, but since it takes longer to return videos from Mars than images or other data, it can be understood the delay in receiving information publicly. Jezero Crater, where Ingenuity landed in 2021, is about 314 million miles (505 million kilometers).
Perseverance can achieve transmission speeds of up to 2Mb / s to its orbiters, which then transmit this data back to Earth at speeds between 500Kb / s to about 3Mb / s, depending on the relative position between Mars and Earth.
NASA was busy this month restoring the link between perseverance and ingenuity.
The two spacecraft lost communication on May 3-5 due to dust covering the helicopter’s solar panels, which prevented the batteries from recharging. The field-programmable input matrix (FPGA), which controls Ingenuity’s operating state, is then turned off, as are its heaters. When he returned online, his watch was reset – which is not good for a number of reasons, one of which is that the FPGA controls the heaters that protect the electronics from the cold Martian night temperatures.
NASA has complied with the warning about future performance:
JPL’s Ingenuity team leader, Teddy Tzanetos, wrote an update on the situation on Friday, promising that Ingenuity’s 29th flight could take place over the next few salts or Martian days, “provided that winter re-commissioning activities are nominally completed “.
Canetos also spoke in detail about how remarkable this helicopter is not only to work, but also to provide people with these 161.3 seconds of footage.
“After hundreds of salt and dozens of flights outside the originally planned five flights, the solar-powered helicopter is in unexplored terrain. We are now working far beyond our original design,” Tsanetos said. ®
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