Mars helicopter phones home after 63 days of silence • Log

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter has called home more than 60 days since last contact.

Intelligibility’s last flight was on April 26, when the rotorcraft took 139 seconds and crossed 363 meters across the Martian sky.

The copter’s role is to fly ahead of the Perseverance rover and look for any potential obstacles or objects of interest. On Flight 52, the flying machine landed on a hill, from which the rover did not enjoy a view.

Persistence then took hold and raised the mountain, and on June 28 the ingenuity and communication were able to be re-established.

NASA Assessment The helicopter’s condition — based on the little data it shared — “indicates that all is well on the first flight to another world.”

This quiet period for intelligence was unrelated to the horrific incident that left the rotorcraft more than six days after Flight 49. On that occasion, a rocky area was an expected source of comms problems, but Intelligence “flipped in and out of nighttime survival mode” and not even an “ac” for days was rated as evidence of “inconvenience.” .”

‘The copter eventually came back online and flew three more times before the Martian landscape fell silent after flight 52.

A tentative flight plan for the 53rd mission has since been developed, with NASA “hoping to go west to an intermediate airfield from which the team plans to make another westward flight to a new operating base near a rocky outcrop. Interest in exploring.”

Look to the sky – you may not be alone

Because NASA wasn’t sure if a rotocraft could fly through the Red Planet’s extremely thin atmosphere, the initial mission of Intelligence called for just five flights.

Japanese researchers have approached the same problem with a different design: a robot modeled after a hummingbird — a creature whose wings flap back and forth rather than up and down like other birds.

A June on paper NatureWritten by Japanese university scientists, the tests detail a robot that flew like a hummingbird at a simulated altitude of 9,000 meters.

The authors concluded that their work “could be extended to the very thin Martian atmosphere,” where “such flapping robotic rovers and human probes could aid in martial aerial exploration.”

For now, however, intelligence rules the Martian skies. ®