REPUBLIKA.CO.ID, JAKARTA — Helicopter Ingenuity Mars belongs NASA unable to communicate. Ingenuity officers lost contact with the helicopter, which weighs 1.8 kilograms, on Thursday (18/1/2024) towards the end of its 72nd flight on the planet Mars.
NASA officials in an update, on Friday (19/1/2024), wrote that Ingenuity data sent to the Perseverance rover (which acts as a link between the helicopter and Earth) during the flight showed that it had successfully climbed to the maximum specified altitude, namely 12 meters.
They added that during the planned descent, communications between the helicopter and the rover were stopped early, before landing. “The Ingenuity team is analyzing available data and considering next steps to re-establish communications with the helicopter,” wrote NASA officials, reported Space, Ahad (21/1/2024).
Ingenuity and Perseverance landed together in February 2021 on the floor of the (45-kilometer) wide Jezero Crater, which hosted a large lake and river delta billions of years ago.
Perseverance hunts for evidence of past Martian life and collects samples for future return to Earth. Meanwhile, Ingenuity is serving as a scout for the car-sized rover, in an additional mission given by NASA after the small helicopter was successful in its original five-flight technology demonstration campaign in spring 2021.
Maybe it’s time for Perseverance to return the favor and help Ingenuity. “Perseverance is currently invisible to Ingenuity, but the team may consider driving closer for visual inspection,” said NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which manages the robot’s second mission, via X on Friday (19/1/2024).
According to the mission’s flight records, Ingenuity has flown for more than 128 minutes and covered a total distance of 17.7 kilometers during 72 Mars flights. It is currently unclear whether this number will continue to increase. We’ll have to wait and see if Ingenuity officials can get back in touch with the pioneering helicopter, the first vehicle to explore the skies of a world beyond Earth.
2024-01-21 07:37:56
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