Ingenuity- Mars 2020 Helicopter, Deployment & Operations |
Ingenuity- Mars 2020 Helicopter, Deployment & Operations |
Mar 7 2021, 04:35 PM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 122 Joined: 19-June 07 Member No.: 2455 |
I'm putting this in the Early Drives category because I believe that one of the primary purposes of these first drives is to find a spot for the helicopter.
Is anyone else wondering like I am just what the terrain needs to look like to set the helicopter down? It sure looks to me that the areas we're in right now are largely free of obstacles for flying and landing with no large rocks. Unless you go for some completely sand covered spot I'm not sure you're going to find any areas any more pristine. Does anybody have any info about what type of zone they are exactly looking for? Since the helicopter is not really designed to be used for investigation of terrain but more as just a proof of concept of flight, I would imagine the choice of area would be wide open and flat. Here's what I've got so far about upcoming events. 1. The helicopter below the rover limits ground clearance so it is vital that the helicopter phase be early in the drives so the rover is not limited in mobility. 2. The main purpose of the helicopter is proof of concept of Mars flight so the emphasis is not using it for exploration/route planning/research photography but merely that we can sustain flight - take off, fly autonomously, and land safely. 3. Once deposited on the surface, it will take a number of days of check outs prior to the first real flight. Should we create a new topic that is discussion about the helicopter? |
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Mar 15 2021, 02:11 AM
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Member Group: Members Posts: 248 Joined: 25-February 21 From: Waltham, Massachussetts, U.S.A. Member No.: 8974 |
The NASA Radioisotope Power Systems web pages have a very detailed 3d model of the rover.
It looks like a full engineering drawing and if you look at the belly has both Ingenuity stowed away in its protective shell and also the sampling system cover which was just dropped unceremoniously. This gave me a much better understanding of the current location and orientation of the helicopter. Looking at the web page in detail, it looks like the 3d model is fbx converted to lzf compressed PLY format, for which there is a parser to extract triangles, normals and colors. This seems to be generated by a JPL protospace system which in turns uses Hololens for AR. -------------------- --
Andreas Plesch, andreasplesch at gmail dot com |
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