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A photograph of NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter taken by the Perseverance Rover on August 2. | Supply: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS

NASA’s Mars Ingenuity Helicopter has accomplished its first flight since its unscheduled touchdown throughout its July 22 flight. The newest flight, Ingenuity’s 54th on the planet, was a 25-second up-and-down hop meant to provide the Ingenuity staff some perception on why the helicopter’s 53rd flight was reduce quick. 

Flight 53, the one which Ingenuity needed to finish abruptly, was deliberate to be a 136-second scouting flight to gather photographs of the Martian floor for the Perseverance rover science staff. The flight would come with flight north for 666 ft (203 meters) at an altitude of 16 ft (5 meters) at 5.6 mph (2.5 meters per second), the place it might hover and procure imagery of a rocky outcrop. 

After that, Ingenuity was presupposed to go straight up 33 ft (10 meters) to permit its hazard divert system to provoke. It could then descend vertically to the touch down. 

In actuality, Ingenuity was solely capable of fly north for 466 ft earlier than its flight contingency program was triggered and the helicopter landed routinely after a complete flight time of 74 seconds. 

“Because the very first flight we’ve got included a program referred to as ‘LAND_NOW’ that was designed to place the helicopter on the floor as quickly as potential if anyone of some dozen off-nominal situations was encountered,” stated Teddy Tzanetos, staff lead emeritus for Ingenuity at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “Throughout Flight 53, we encountered one among these, and the helicopter labored as deliberate and executed a right away touchdown.”

The Ingenuity staff believes that this early touchdown was triggered by picture frames from the helicopter’s navigation digital camera not syncing up appropriately with knowledge from Ingenuity’s inertial measurement unit, which measures its acceleration and rotational charges. 

Information from the inertial measurement unit permits NASA to estimate the place the helicopter is, how briskly it’s shifting, and the way it’s oriented in area. 

This similar drawback occurred originally of Ingenuity’s life on Mars on its sixth flight on Might 22, 2021. Ingenuity skilled extreme pitching and rolling through the flight as a result of a number of picture frames had been dropped. 

After this incident, the Ingenuity staff up to date the helicopter’s flight software program to assist mitigate the influence of dropped photographs, which labored, up till Flight 53. Throughout that flight, the variety of dropped navigation photographs exceed what the sooner software program patch allowed. 

“Whereas we hoped to by no means set off a LAND_NOW, this flight is a beneficial case examine that may profit future plane working on different worlds,” stated Tzanetos. “The staff is working to higher perceive what occurred in Flight 53, and with Flight 54’s success we’re assured that our child is able to maintain hovering forward on Mars.”

Ingenuity touched down on Mars in April 2021. The helicopter was the primary ever helicopter to be despatched to a different planet. It was despatched as a know-how demonstration to check the primary powered flight on Mars. Whereas the helicopter has been flying sturdy for over two years now, NASA’s staff doesn’t count on it to final ceaselessly.