Ingenuity- Mars 2020 Helicopter, Deployment & Operations Options

[tau]

The first color photo from Ingenuity's 16th flight on sol 268 (colors enhanced, hence the blue appearance of the sky).
A dust devil is faintly visible in the distance.

[tau]

The last color photo from Ingenuity's 16th flight on sol 268 with rover tracks (colors enhanced)

[Cherurbino]

Maybe it's a new campaign to get a better understanding of the terrain at the landing site?

Another RTE was acquired a few sols after Flight 16 on sol 274...

Although the quality at the short distances is incompatible with Perseverance, artists may enjoy the non-typical colors in the martian gamma from pearl to ultramarine, and the most attentive amateurs may find a pebble in the camouflage robe of a two-color panda bear .

Attachment is resized; original 1,280×800 may be downloaded from Wikipedia commons.

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[neo56]

Here are the 9 pictures taken by RTE camera during Flight 16. Distorsion, vignetting and color balance corrected.







And these 9 pictures as an animation:

[neo56]

A picture taken by RTE camera while Ingenuity was on the ground, on sol 274 (November 27, 2021).
Numerous colorful pebbles are visible in the FOV.

[Tom Tamlyn]

Ingenuity flew for the 17th time at Mars on Sunday, Dec. 5. After the helicopter executed the planned 614-foot (187-meter) traverse to the northeast, the radio communications link between Ingenuity and the Perseverance Mars rover was disrupted during the final descent phase of the flight. Approximately 15 minutes later, Perseverance received several packets of additional Ingenuity telemetry indicating that the flight electronics and battery were healthy.

More in this Ingenuity team update: https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter...overing-limits/

Also, an interesting interview with Olivier Toupet, who has been a rover driver for MER, Curiosity, and now Perseverance, giving his assessment of the extent to which Ingenuity has contributed to the primary mission.

https://spectrum.ieee.org/mars-perseverance

[Explorer1]

Mars Science Helicopter, I like the sound of that! The link in the interview article gives some great details (not sure how we missed it before!)

[PDP8E]

< Nprev-- please delete -- thanks >

[Bill Harris]

Any more info on this latest flight?

https://www.slashgear.com/nasa-lost-contact...s-10701898/amp/

--Bill

[PaulH51]

Any more info on this latest flight?
--Bill

The team update the helicopter blog on December 9, 2021:

"On Wednesday (Sol 285 in Perseverance’s mission on Mars) the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter relayed additional information on its status. The limited data that was received indicates power aboard the rotorcraft is excellent, which suggests it is in an upright stance, allowing its solar array to efficiently power its six lithium-ion batteries. However, the same line-of-sight issues the team believes impeded communications at the end of Flight 17 still prevented the majority of data packets (including imagery from the flight) to be relayed back to the rover – and then to Earth. The next opportunity for a data transfer is expected to occur sometime within the next several days."

Since then they have received and published 5 Navcam images from the last moments of the flight, and they have also updated the interactive map using the JSON data (elevation, coordinates etc)

[stevesliva]

Reports of my distress have been greatly exaggerated. -- Ingenuity

Thanks to Tom for the links earlier.

[Bill Harris]

So this is a loss of LOS telemetry with the Rover. At least the autonomous flight functions remained functional.

--Bill

[stevesliva]

Yeah, just a line of site thing because the rover wasn't where the flight plan had originally assumed it would be.

[Cherurbino]

(full_res: https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020-raw-images/p...1_01_295J01.png)

Mars Perseverance Sol 282: Left Navigation Camera (Navcam)
This image was acquired on Dec. 5, 2021 (Sol 282) at the local mean solar time of 13:40:26
mastAz: "179.973",
mastEl: "25.1973",
Azimuth: "60 deg"

1. Am I right that this is the Bras hillock behind which Ingenuity has just hidden ~hour before?

2. Last Phil's map shows that the azimuth from the landing site to Perseverance on the flight sol (282) was almost the same as on sol 281 and the move on sol 282 could not cause the serious aggravation in LOS.

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[tau]

Bras hill is marked with B in the image below.