![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() To help mission planners get ready for the sample-return effort and other future rotorcraft missions, Ingenuity continues to carefully push its limits. Such incredible footage is a routine matter for the flying Red Planet drone. Ridged dunes fly underneath Ingenuity during its 47th Mars flight on March 9, 2023. Related: NASA's Mars Perseverance rover sample tubes look like Star Wars lightsabers The dual drones on the sample return mission, which is slated to launch in 2028, will serve as backups for Perseverance if the rover cannot ferry the samples it's currently collecting to a rocket-toting lander on its own the rover has cached some sample tubes in a "depot" on Jezero's floor, which the little Ingenuity-like choppers could fetch and return to their mothership lander. Moreover, the focus is shifting to refining operations, teamwork and design decisions as NASA works to develop two Martian helicopters for its Red Planet sample-return effort. But the drone is also now serving as a scout for Perseverance, as the duo explore an ancient river delta on the floor of Mars' Jezero Crater. "The primary goal is still alive: to be a technology demonstrator," Tzanetos said. But the flight plan uploaded to Ingenuity went well, and other flights ensued. Getting Ingenuity off the ground was a milestone in itself, as the Martian atmosphere is quite thin and nobody can directly stick-shift the helicopter from Earth the time delay between communications and receipt is too long for real-time control. Ingenuity hovered 10 feet (3 m) off the ground during a 40-second flight, a milestone hailed by then-NASA science chief Thomas Zurbuchen as "a true extraterrestrial Wright Brothers moment." No rotorcraft had flown on a world beyond Earth before Ingenuity made its first tentative hop on April 19, 2021, just two months after it landed on the floor of Mars' Jezero Crater aboard Perseverance. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |