The Ingenuity mini-helicopter will fly again just next Sunday (23), after an 18-day delay from its original plan thanks to a storm that lifted a lot of particles in the Martian atmosphere, according to a statement from NASA.
According to the US space agency, the small flying vehicle should have a new flight altitude of 5/1, but a few hours after the turn of the year, the storm brought too many particles into the atmosphere, effectively blocking light from the sun. to reach with intensity on the surface of the red planet.
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The problem is that both the Ingenuity and Perseverance rover, which comes with it, are powered by solar panels that keep them going by storing energy from our star. Without it, or even “less”, the vehicle will stop working.
And it wasn’t the only accident: “Atmospheric dust is heated by sunlight and heats the atmosphere, resulting in a reduction in the density of the thin air that Ingenuity must pass through,” said Jonathan Bapst and Michael Mischna of NASA’s meteorology team for the Mars exploration.
The density-reducing effect, however, persists even after the “big” storm has passed. Bapst and Mischna said analytical instruments showed a 7% drop from pre-weather levels. “This reduction puts the average density below the minimum safe flight threshold, and will carry unnecessary risks to vehicles.”
Now that the effects are back to normal, NASA has scheduled next Sunday for a flight, which will last 100 seconds and will take Ingenuity out of the mountainous region known as the “Southern Séítah Basin”.
However, it is highly likely that the situation will repeat itself in the near future: according to NASA, the fall of Mars is coming, and this marks the beginning of what the agency calls the “dust season”, which lasts for the entire period until the end of Winter. It was around this time, for example, that the weather on Mars effectively “killed” the rover Opportunity, in 2018 – a storm of planetary proportions forcing the rover into hibernation mode. After a flyby, NASA attempted to reactivate it, but a possible catastrophic system failure meant it was unresponsive to a year of signaling efforts by the agency.
“Future events in the dust season are expected [oleh tim] and potentially a hurricane of global scale as observed in 2018, 2007 and 2001,” the statement read. “We will continue to be diligent in our efforts to continue to fly Ingenuity safely for the foreseeable future.”
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Storm’s post forcing NASA to postpone Mars Ingenuity’s flight first appeared on Digital Look.
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