The Mars Ingenuity Helicopter by NASA has recently completed its latest flight on the planet, marking its 54th flight. This flight was intended to provide further insight into why the helicopter’s 53rd flight was interrupted. The Ingenuity team is currently analyzing the results of a recent 25-second up-and-down hop of a flight to determine the cause of a previous interruption.
During one of its flights, Ingenuity, a helicopter on Mars, had to end its scouting mission earlier than planned. The flight, Flight 53, was intended to last 136 seconds and collect images of the Martian surface for the Perseverance rover science team.
The plan was for Ingenuity to fly north for 666 feet (203 meters) at an altitude of 16 feet (5 meters) at 5.6 mph (2.5 meters per second). It would then hover and obtain imagery of a rocky outcrop. Ingenuity helped the team study, Mars, even though the mission ended early.
To ensure a safe landing, Ingenuity is programmed to ascend 33 feet (10 meters) and activate its hazard diversion system before descending vertically for a touchdown.
During its first flight on Mars, Ingenuity could only fly north for 466 feet before it had to land automatically due to a flight contingency program. The total flight time was only 74 seconds.
The NASA team responsible for the Ingenuity helicopter included a program called ‘LAND_NOW’ that would immediately land the aircraft in case of off-nominal scenarios. During Flight 53, the program was activated, and the helicopter executed an immediate landing as planned.
The early landing of the helicopter was likely caused by an issue with syncing data from its navigation camera and inertial measurement unit.
Data from the inertial measurement unit allows NASA to estimate where the helicopter is, how fast it’s moving, and how it’s oriented in space.
During Ingenuity’s 6th flight on Mars in May 2021, it encountered a problem where it began to pitch and roll excessively due to the dropping of multiple image frames.
The Ingenuity team improved the helicopter’s flight software after an incident involving dropped images. However, during Flight 53, more navigation images were dropped than the previous software patch could handle.
Tzanetos believes that Flight 53’s unplanned touchdown on Mars could help plan future aircraft missions to other planets. The team is looking into the incident, and they’re feeling optimistic about the success of Flight 54. Their aircraft is fully equipped for further exploration on Mars.
In April 2021, NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter successfully landed on Mars, becoming the first-ever helicopter to be sent to another planet. The purpose of the mission was to test powered flight on Mars. According to NASA’s team, the helicopter will only last for a while, even though it’s been used for over two years.
NASA plans to replace its Sample Fetch Rovers with two drones similar to the Ingenuity helicopter. These drones will serve as backups to the Perseverance Rover in the Mars Sample Return Campaign.
