JAKARTA – The Ingenuity helicopter was flown again on Planet Mars. On January 18, the drone reached its 72nd flight. However, the flight experienced problems.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), part of the United States Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), said that Ingenuity’s flight initially went smoothly and the plane managed to reach its maximum altitude, namely 12 meters.
The flight to check the Ingenuity system was expected to complete in 32.08 seconds, but it turned out to be much faster than expected. This plane landed early because communications were suddenly cut off.
“During the planned descent, communications between the helicopter and the rover were stopped early, before landing,” NASA’s JPL team said in an official statement. However, JPL did not explain the flight time.
Communication between the rover and the drone was lost for several days and this affected the monitoring team on Earth. Luckily, the JPL team was able to reconnect with Ingenuity on Sunday, January 21.
“Today’s good news, we have re-established contact with the Mars Helicopter after instructing Persevere (the Mars rover) to conduct a long-term listening session for Ingenuity signals,” explained NASA’s JPL.
Even though they have reconnected, JPL does not yet know the cause of the loss of communication for several days. They are still reviewing the latest data from Ingenuity to understand the cause of the anomaly.
2024-01-22 05:30:00
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