The helicopter made a short jump to help the crew better understand why its previous flight was cancelled. NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter successfully completed its 54th flight on August 3, its first since the helicopter interrupted its flight on July 22. The 25-second up-and-down jump provided data that could help the Ingenuity crew determine why its 53rd flight ended prematurely.

Flight 53 was planned for the Perseverance rover science team as a 136-second reconnaissance flight dedicated to collecting images of the planet’s surface. The complex flight profile includes flying north at an altitude of 666 feet (203 meters), 16 feet (5 meters) high, and at 5.6 mph (2.5 meters per second), followed by 8 feet (2.5 meters), where you can hover and rocky. you can get an image of a ledge. Ingenuity would then directly climb 33 feet (10 meters) to fire the hazard avoidance system, then descend vertically to land on the ground.

Instead, the helicopter flew the first half of its autonomous flight, flying north for 466 feet (142 meters) at an altitude of 16 feet (5 meters). An emergency program was then launched and Ingenuity automatically landed. Total flight time was 74 seconds.

“From the very first flight, we included a program called ‘LAND_NOW’, which is designed to bring the helicopter to the surface as quickly as possible should any of a few dozen non-standard scenarios arise,” said team leader Teddy Tsanetos. Honorary award for creativity at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “We encountered one of these on Flight 53 and the helicopter operated as planned and landed immediately.”

The Ingenuity team believes the early landing was due to the image frames from the helicopter’s navigation camera not being synchronized as expected with the data from the helicopter’s inertial measurement unit. The device measures data that allows Ingenuity to estimate acceleration and rotation rates, where the helicopter is, how fast it is moving, and how it is oriented in space. This isn’t the first time a helicopter’s Navcam has dropped footage in flight. As recently as May 22, 2021, several frames were taken, causing excessive pitch and yaw towards the end of Flight 6.

This image of NASA’s Perseverance rover (seen above, right of center) was taken by the Ingenuity Mars helicopter at an altitude of about 16 feet (5 meters) during its 54th flyby on Mars day 872, or left August 3, 2023. your mission

After Flight 6, the crew updated the flight software to help mitigate the effects of the missed footage, and the fix worked well for the next 46 flights. On Flight 53, however, the number of reset navigation images exceeded what the software patch allowed.

“While we hoped never to launch LAND_NOW, this flight is a valuable case study that will benefit future aircraft operating on other worlds,” Tsanetos said. “The team is working to better understand what happened on Flight 53, and with the success of Flight 54, we’re confident that our baby is ready to continue frontflight on Mars.”

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Ingenuity started life on Mars as a technology demonstration. It made its maiden flight on April 19, 2021, hovering for 30 seconds at an altitude of 10 feet (3 meters). Within weeks, four more flights added 499 seconds and saw the helicopter fly horizontally at 1,171 feet (357 meters) above the surface. After Ingenuity proved that flight to Mars was possible, it began a demonstration phase of operations in May 2021 to demonstrate how aerial exploration could benefit future exploration of Mars and other worlds.

The Ingenuity Mars helicopter was built by JPL, which also led the NASA headquarters project. It is sponsored by NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. NASA Ames Research Center in California Silicon Valley and NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia provided significant flight performance analysis and technical assistance during Ingenuity’s development. AeroVironment Inc., Qualcomm, and SolAero also provided design assistance and key vehicle components. Lockheed Space has developed and manufactured a helicopter delivery system to Mars.