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In the past few days we have written about how NASA Perseverance is continuing its exploration campaign of the area of the river delta that filled the Jezero crater with water. The US rover is also collecting samples that will then (around 2033) be shipped to Earth thanks to the NASA / ESA Mars Sample Return mission, which has recently seen several changes. And what about the Martian drone NASA Ingenuity?
What was supposed to be just a “shy” attempt to take flight to another planet is proving increasingly capable of withstanding a hostile environment. In fact, it must be considered that thehelicopter was made from COTS components o Off-the-Shelf component. Nothing really fancy or particularly expensive. All this made it possible to keep the cost of this part of the mission at around 85 million dollars (little if we consider that the more complex Perseverance exceeds 2 billion dollars). In June Ingenuity it had completed its 29th flight, the last one before stopping due to the Martian winter. Now the activities have resumed.
The NASA Ingenuity drone has completed its 30th flight to Mars
As we wrote, this drone it was designed with the idea of trying something that had never been realized: flying to another planet. Engineers, while knowing Mars, they didn’t even know if it would take off (and even if it did, getting to five flights would have been a success). Now we are looking at the 30th flightsuccessfully performed in these hours.
As anticipated in precedencewinter made it difficult to fly NASA Ingenuity. The dust raised by the storms and the reduced solar exposure did not allow the batteries to be recharged properly (through the solar panels) thus exposing the electronics of the drone to the harsh Martian temperatures. Fortunately thehelicopter it withstood 101 winter sols and is now back to work (despite night temperatures reaching -86 ° C).
Before trying to fly again, the engineers rotated the blades at 50 rpm (on August 6) and at 2573 rpm (on August 15). The result was more than good. This made it possible to proceed to the 30th flight to Mars. The flight of NASA Ingenuity planned to reach the maximum altitude of 5 meters and to move sideways by 2 meters with a flight time of 33 “. This allowed the engineers to understand if the drone he was still able to make accurate landings.
At the time of this writing neither the flight log nor the json files have been updated with the latest data. Fortunately the RAW images are already available showing that the drone actually flew as planned for 30th flight. In the next few hours (or days) there will be the possibility to have all the data available and updated so as to resume following the deeds of NASA Ingenuity.
Gift ideas, why waste time and risk making mistakes?
GIVE A GOOD AMAZON!
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