Mars Ingenuity made contact with Earth after two months of silence
(NASA / JPL-Caltech https://bit.ly/3rcyYfh)
The Martian drone Ingenuity contacted the Earth after 63 days of radio silence.
The reason for this prolonged outage was a hill that became an obstacle between the Perseverance rover and the drone when the latter was on its 52nd flight.
Ingenuity became the first aircraft to make a controlled flight in the atmosphere of another planet.
Initially, it was not planned that the drone would work for a long time: it was given one Martian month for five short experimental flights.
However, the first extraterrestrial drone has been operating for the third year on the planet, having survived even breakdowns and winter.
COMMUNICATION PROBLEMS
Ingenuity completed its 52nd flight on April 26 of this year, after which communication was interrupted.
Only on June 28, 2023, the connection between it and the Earth, conducted through the Perseverance rover, was restored.
The cause of communication problems was a physical obstacle in the form of a hill.
Analysis of the telemetry from the Ingenuity showed it to be in good condition, if additional checks lead to a similar result, then the drone will make a new flight within the next few weeks.
The drone also confirmed the success of the 52nd flight (it flew 363 meters in 139 seconds) and took a number of images of the surface of Mars.
This is not the first situation with a prolonged loss of communication, before that this happened before the 50th flight of the drone.
The complication of flights is connected with the very rugged terrain (the drone and the rover rose higher along the delta of the ancient river that flowed into the Lake Lake crater).
The other reason is because Ingenuity made a transition into a low power mode due to the dust content of the solar panels.
The team periodically turned off the drone completely at night, which leads to a strong temporal uncertainty of its inclusion in the morning, when the batteries are sufficiently charged.
Sources:
- Space.com: https://www.space.com/mars-helicopter-ingenuity-breaks-63-day-silence
- Gizmodo: https://gizmodo.com/mars-ingenuity-helicopter-nasa-two-month-silence-1850601767
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