{"id":46006,"date":"2023-08-08T18:32:05","date_gmt":"2023-08-08T10:32:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/the-helicopter-on-mars-just-flew-again-after-surviving-an-emergency-landing\/"},"modified":"2023-08-08T18:32:05","modified_gmt":"2023-08-08T10:32:05","slug":"the-helicopter-on-mars-just-flew-again-after-surviving-an-emergency-landing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/the-helicopter-on-mars-just-flew-again-after-surviving-an-emergency-landing\/","title":{"rendered":"The helicopter on Mars just flew again after surviving an emergency landing"},"content":{"rendered":"

By the standard of some of its previous flights, the most recent voyage of NASA\u2019s intrepid Ingenuity<\/em> helicopter on Mars was nothing special. Over a period of 24 seconds, the small helicopter rose to an altitude 5 meters above the red planet\u2019s dusty surface and then touched back down in the same spot.<\/p>\n

During some of its past flights, Ingenuity<\/em> has flown for nearly three minutes at a time and traversed as far as 700 meters across Martian terrain. In fact, after landing on Mars more than two years ago as part of the Perseverance mission, the helicopter is arguably one of NASA\u2019s greatest exploration feats of all time.<\/p>\n

Mission success for Ingenuity<\/em> was completing five relatively short flights. However, since its first test flight in April 2021, the helicopter has exceeded all expectations by flying more than 50 different sorties across Mars and surviving long and dark winters.<\/p>\n

Despite its brevity, however, Ingenuity<\/em>\u2018s most recent flight on August 3 was nonetheless an important one for the helicopter. That\u2019s because, on its 53rd flight in late July, the helicopter automatically aborted a planned flight of 136 seconds after just 76 seconds and made an emergency landing.<\/p>\n

,<\/p>\n

After the flight, the helicopter\u2019s operators at NASA\u2019s Jet Propulsion Laboratory determined that the premature landing came after images from Ingenuity\u2019s navigation camera did not match data from the vehicle\u2019s inertial measurement unit. In short, its on-board computer expected to see one thing, and it saw another.<\/p>\n

\u201cSince the very first flight, we have included a program called \u2018LAND_NOW\u2019 that was designed to put the helicopter on the surface as soon as possible if any one of a few dozen off-nominal scenarios was encountered,\u201d Teddy Tzanetos, team lead emeritus for Ingenuity, said. \u201cDuring Flight 53, we encountered one of these, and the helicopter worked as planned and executed an immediate landing.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

This image of NASA\u2019s Perseverance Mars rover, visible at the top right of center, was taken by the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter during its 54th flight on Aug. 3, 2023.<\/p>\n

Credit:
\n NASA\/JPL-Caltech<\/p>\n<\/figure>\n

The helicopter\u2019s flight last Thursday was to gather additional data about the conditions that prompted the previous flight to end early. After the latest flight, Tzanetos said the helicopter team feels confident that Ingenuity can get back to flying more rigorous missions soon.<\/p>\n

There was one other benefit of the short up-and-down mission. At the height of 5 meters above the surface, the helicopter snapped a photo of the Martian terrain that included Perseverance at the top of the frame\u2014an image somehow both desolate and full of hope at the same time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By the standard of some of its previous flights, the most recent voyage of NASA\u2019s intrepid Ingenuity helicopter on Mars was nothing special. Over a period of 24 seconds, the small helicopter rose to an altitude 5 meters above the red planet\u2019s dusty surface and then touched back down in the same spot. During some […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":46007,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"inline_featured_image":false,"footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[4705,1630,367,21],"class_list":["post-46006","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-helicopter","tag-ingenuity","tag-mars","tag-space"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46006"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=46006"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/46006\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/46007"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=46006"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=46006"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=46006"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}