NASA’s Mars Helicopter resumes its flights after its sudden landing

NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter had a few months, losing contact with its home planet, and later suffering a glitch that halted its flight. But you can’t keep a good chopper. Creativity has flown over the Martian terrain again as its team on Earth tries to figure out what went wrong on their previous voyage.

The Mars Helicopter briefly flew for 25 hours.The second hopped on Aug. 3, recording its 54th flight above the planet’s surface to provide data that could help determine why its 53rd flight ended prematurely, NASA open this week.

Flight 53 occurred on July 22 –The first flight will take place after that NASA has reconnected with creativity After 63 days of silence. Dexterity was to fly for 136 seconds, reaching a height of 16 feet (5 meters) above the surface of Mars before descending vertically to 8 feet (2.5 meters) to take and collect images of the rocky outcrop. Persistent rover data. The helicopter Then he went up direct to 33 feet (10 metres), allowing its software to identify areas unsuitable for landing, before they touch the surface of Mars.

Unfortunately, the helicopter’s 53rd flight did not go according to plan. Instead, Ingenuity flew for a total of 74 seconds before the flight emergency program called “LAND_NOW , causing the helicopter to descend automatically. The program is “designed to put the helicopter to the surface as soon as possible if any one of a few dozen non-nominal scenarios is encountered,” Ingenuity Emeritus Team Leader Teddy Zanetos said in a statement.

The Ingenuity team believes the helicopter’s emergency landing was triggered when image frames from the helicopter’s navigation camera did not sync with data from the inertial measurement unit (which measures its rates of acceleration and rotation), according to NASA.

However, the success of its subsequent flight gives the team confidence that the problem can be resolved by updating the flight software to help mitigate the impact of the downed images. Creativity also took a picture of her rover companion during her recent trip.

“While we hoped we would never fly the LAND_NOW aircraft, this flight is a valuable case study that will benefit future aircraft operating on other worlds,” Zanetos said. “The team is working towards a better understanding of what happened on Flight 53, and with the success of Flight 54, we are confident that our baby is ready to continue flying on Mars.”

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