NASA Sending a Little Robot Helicopter to Mars

[Yazata]

The Mars helicopter might be in trouble!



JPL say they lost communication with it prior to landing during flight 72. It isn't in line of sight and they are considering rolling the Perseverance rover to its location to see what happened to it.

https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicop...us-update/

[Yazata]

Hope springs eternal!

JPL just put out this: "Good news today: We've reestablished contact with the #MarsHelicopter after instructing @NASAPersevere to perform long-duration listening sessions for Ingenuity’s signal.

The team is reviewing the new data to better understand the unexpected comms dropout during Flight 72."

https://twitter.com/NASAJPL/status/1748511611110002728

[Yazata]

The Mars helicopter is history...



NASA/JPL is still in contact with it and it's still responding, but it's become apparent that it crash-landed when its communications failed the other day and one of its rotor blades broke.

So it can't fly any longer and NASA has decided to officially close out its mission.

When they sent it, they didn't even know if it would work. If it did, they hoped to get five flights out of it over 30 days. Instead they got 72 flights over almost three years!

All the space nuts are really sad today, including me...



https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/after-thre...ssion-ends

https://twitter.com/NASAJPL/status/1750604002331406713

https://www.youtube-nocookie.com/embed/raOA2MX-XLQ

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[C C]

The Mars helicopter is history...



NASA/JPL is still in contact with it and it's still responding, but it's become apparent that it crash-landed when its communications failed the other day and one of its rotor blades broke.

So it can't fly any longer and NASA has decided to officially close out its mission.

When they sent it, they didn't even know if it would work. If it did, they hoped to get five flights out of it over 30 days. Instead they got 72 flights over almost three years!

All the space nuts are really sad today, including me...

Don't worry, folks. It will be reborn again on a future China Mars mission. "Thanks for taking care of the expensive R&D, NASA."

April 28, 2023: The mission overview contained references to a small helicopter similar in design to NASA's Ingenuity Mars helicopter, currently exploring the Martian surface.

[Yazata]

The Daily Hopper

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[Yazata]

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[Yazata]

Eric Berger's very interesting comments on Ingenuity from Ars Technica

https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/01/no...ploration/

[Yazata]

Photo by departing Perseverance showing the final resting place of Ingenuity, its little friend. Ingenuity is the tiny dark dot in the center of the photo in the dunes.

nasa photo

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[Yazata]

NASA/JPL highly zoomed photo of Ingenuity taken by Perseverance, showing its broken rotor.

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[Yazata]

Map showing Ingenuity's path on Mars over 72 flights

https://twitter.com/NASAPersevere/status...0576685288