2023-07-04 13:45:37
The 52nd flight of Ingenuity, NASA’s robot helicopter that, along with its companion Perseverance, a surface robot, arrived on Mars in February 2021, took place on April 26, but the center’s technicians Mission control at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in the United States lost contact with the aerial robot as it was descending to the surface to land at its destination.
Recently, contact with Ingenuity was recovered and it has been verified that that flight was completed successfully.
The communications drop was due to the presence of a hill between the helicopter landing site and the location of the robotic rover. This hill blocked communication between the two. Perseverance acts as a radio repeater between Ingenuity and the mission control center at JPL. The technicians of said center already feared that this could happen. Therefore, it was not a surprise.
On June 28, when Perseverance had made enough progress to finally get over the hill and in sight of Ingenuity again, contact was resumed.
It has been verified that the Ingenuity is still operational.
The Ingenuity photographed by Perseverance a few days before the flight in which contact with the drone was lost. Communications with it were reestablished 63 days later. (Photo: NASA JPL/Caltech/ASU/MSSS)
The objective of Flight 52, which covered a distance of 363 meters and lasted 139 seconds, was to send the drone to take photos of that site, to see, among other things, if it is passable for Perseverance.
“The portion of Jezero crater that the rover and helicopter are currently exploring has a lot of rugged terrain, making communication outages between the two more likely,” said Ingenuity team leader Josh Anderson of JPL. The team’s goal is to keep Ingenuity ahead of Perseverance, in forward mode, which sometimes means temporarily exceeding the limits set for communications.
If all goes well, the drone will soon make a new flight. (Source: NCYT from Amazings)
#Mars #drone #reappears #losing #contact #flight