NASA's Ingenuity helicopter sent its final signals to Earth earlier this year. Engineers have studied these and begun to piece together a picture of the events leading up to its final flight. They concluded that the data provided by the navigation system was inaccurate, leading to a chain of events that ultimately led to the system's demise. One of the biggest problems appears to be that the terrain was slippery, resulting in no landmarks on Flight 72.
Mars is the fourth planet from the Sun and is known for its distinctive red color. Its surface is covered with iron oxide, known by its more common name rust. The planet is just over half the size of Earth and has some fascinating geological features such as Olympus Mons, the largest volcano in the solar system. Valles Marineris is a canyon system that stretches for thousands of kilometers and dwarfs the Grand Canyon. The planet's atmosphere is largely carbon dioxide and is currently incapable of supporting life. It's hard to believe that this hasn't always been the case and that missions like Mars 2020 have helped unlock the mysteries of the Red Planet.
A full disk view of Mars, courtesy of VMC. Photo credit: ESA
The Perseverance rover and the Ingenuity helicopter were both part of the Mars 2020 mission and have been exploring Mars aboard an Atlas V rocket since their launch in 2020. Ingenuity was the first robotic rotorcraft to perform powered flight in the Martian atmosphere. The first flight took place on April 19, 2021. The 1.8 kilogram drone took off with the power of two counter-rotating rotor blades. The drone's blades are 1.2m long, oversized by Earth scales, but the atmosphere is only 1% as dense as Earth, requiring larger blades than usual.
Image of the Mars Ingenuity helicopter (Source: NASA)
Flight 72 was scheduled for January 18th of this year and there was nothing special about it. The plan was to do a quick high-altitude flight to check the flight systems and take some photos of the area. The flight data showed that it reached an altitude of 12 meters, took the images and was back on the surface after 32 seconds, but communications were lost. After communications were restored, it was discovered that Ingenuity had suffered damage to its rotors.
Now, nearly a year after the incident, a team of engineers from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory have analyzed the data. Their results will be published in the next few weeks. However, the engineering team claims it was more difficult than expected to complete an accident investigation from 100 million miles away. The flaws lie in the navigation system, which was supposed to visually track surface features using a camera aimed around. The system worked over more structured terrain during early flights, but as Ingenuity moved over Jezero Crater it began to work over unstructured sand ripples.
The navigation system should provide estimates of the helicopter's speed, primarily to allow it to land. The data released by Flight 72 showed that the navigation system could not find any features to track. Images showed that the lack of features resulted in a harder-than-usual touchdown, causing the vehicle to pitch and roll. The sudden change in attitude resulted in increased loading on the rotors beyond their designed limits, resulting in structural damage.
Even though Ingenuity can no longer fly, it can still provide weather and avionics data to the Perseverance rover. It will help us understand more about the weather around him, but perhaps his greatest legacy is his flying lessons on an alien world.
Source: NASA conducts first investigation into aircraft accident on another world
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