That Helicopter creativity The first flight on Mars has been delayed, but NASA’s Red Planet team remains preoccupied with a greater persistence mission.
Car size Persistence Rover It has an ambitious agenda during a major two-year mission to search for potentially habitable environments and to capture the most promising specimens for a future mission to return to Earth in 2031.
So, while persistence approaches creativity to finally capture drone flight footage, the rover is far from idle. Mission of Official account on Twitter This shows that it is firmly in place After driving 0.17 miles (270 meters) From the landing site on February 18 to the airport seen by the mission team. To stay busy during the delay, Percy studied the rocks at his feet.
Related: How to watch the creativity of the first Mars helicopter online
“I’m preparing to do some local science on the #MarsHelicopter search, while we await the first flight. I have photographed some local stones, ”wrote the account on Twitter on Wednesday. You can view the most recently downloaded images On this NASA site, Which actually shows some pictures of nearby rocks along with a distant view of the Ingenuity helicopter.
Meanwhile, the Ingenuity team is busy solving the problem of a high speed lap test that did not deliver the expected results on Friday (April 9th). Anomaly For the date of the first flight, Which should have been Sunday (April 11). The agility must fly by itself because of the distance between Earth and Mars; Effectively, this means no one can “control” the drone, so the Ingenuity team wants to proceed with caution before allowing Helidron to fly.
The team spent the last weekend researching solutions and found that “a slight modification and reinstallation of the Ingenuity Flight Control Program is the strongest way forward,” said officials at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California, who were running the presentation mission, Written in update on Monday.
JPL has yet to set a new flight date, and indicates that it will take some time to submit and validate software modifications. The team had 30 sol (or 31 Earth days) to launch the agility on Earth at least once before the rover was scheduled to move forward. Because creativity remains healthy, JPL officials added that they are confident the helicopters will fly before closing the windows.
Persistence, creativity and mission carry through the first 100 important days as the Jet Propulsion Laboratory tries to take advantage of the excitement and adrenaline that accompanies a new Mars landing. Control unit Temporary work on “mars time” And advance their schedule by about 40 minutes a day until they wake up at the same time as the rover and the helicopter.
Helicopter flights to Mars could, if successful, mark a new generation of flying cruisers that can roam ahead of explorers and humans to search for travel routes or to inspect dangerous terrain inaccessible to ground vehicles. cleverness This can take up to five trips On Mars, the latter (if they are) are expected to fly into uncharted terrain at the Jezero Crater.
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