Ingenuity- Mars 2020 Helicopter, Deployment & Operations Options

[Cherurbino]

A few hours ago a new entry (revision as of 04:23, 22 March 2022) appeared in the Wikipedia article with the following coordinates of flight #22 landing:

CODE

{"longitude":{"value":77.4456182002905,"unit":"degree"},
"latitude":{"value":18.44901422293474,"unit":"degree"},
"easting":{"value":4590565.593327679,"unit":"meter"},
"northing":{"value":1093559.737667631,"unit":"meter"}}

Presumably the editor (it's anonymous without user page where I could ask him) used a source other than the commonly known JSON ("m20_heli_waypoints.json") which still ends with the "flight 21" record. Could anybody help to find another JSON query returning the current coordinates for Ingenuity? (Perseverance has multiple JSON's extracting waypoints and traverse paths).
-- Thank you, Cherurbino

[Cherurbino]

Now we have distances of 720, 630, 820 and 1330 meters.

I can't beleive my eyes but rough estimates of communications' distance before Ingenuity's last departure and Perseverance at sol 384 show circa 1300 m.
Coordinates of helicopter's arrival are unknown but it's obviuos that the final distance between vehicles is even more.

[vikingmars]

I can't beleive my eyes but rough estimates of communications' distance before Ingenuity's last departure and Perseverance at sol 384 show circa 1300 m.
Coordinates of helicopter's arrival are unknown but it's obviuos that the final distance between vehicles is even more.

Yes: to make Ingenuity's extended mission happen, they will have to try soon the next flights

[Cherurbino]

https://twitter.com/NASAJPL/status/1506072916797972483
Over the weekend, the #MarsHelicopter took its 22nd flight!
The trip lasted 101.4 seconds and Ingenuity got up to 10 meters in the air. The team is planning another flight perhaps as early as later this week.

[mcaplinger]

Maybe we could just avoid all this churn and wait for the official site to be updated?

[Bill Harris]

https://twitter.com/NASAJPL/status/1506072916797972483
Over the weekend, the #MarsHelicopter took its 22nd flight!
The trip lasted 101.4 seconds and Ingenuity got up to 10 meters in the air. The team is planning another flight perhaps as early as later this week.

Interesting analyses of the copter a year into it's mission flying four times the number of missions it was designed for.
This is indeed "The Little Copter that Could"!

--Bill

[tau]

Combined visibility analysis of the communication antennas with the helicopter at its current (sol 388) position and at the planned landing position beyond Séítah.
Light gray: Line-of-sight from both helicopter positions to the rover is blocked by terrain obstacles.
Semitransparent gray: Line-of-sight from one of both positions is blocked.
Transparent (full color): Communication from both helicopter positions to the rover is possible.
Interesting result: There is a small area (blue circle) ahead of the rover on its planned traverse,
where the rover antenna has free lines-of-sight to the launch AND landing position when the helicopter is flying the non-stop route.

[Cherurbino]

Combined visibility analysis of the communication antennas with the helicopter at its current (sol 388) position and at the planned landing position beyond Séítah.

Terrific!
I wish an article on that subject, with drawings and calculations, to appear anywhere in the Internet sites (not forums ) so I could refer to it in Wikipedia. Forums are not appreciated, alas ((.

[Cherurbino]

Combined visibility analysis of the communication antennas with the helicopter

DRAFT TABLE, CALCULATIONS OF LOS ARE ERRATIC, published only as illustration for the question

Source:

• https://mars.nasa.gov/mmgis-maps/M20/Layers..._waypoints.json
• https://mars.nasa.gov/mmgis-maps/M20/Layers..._waypoints.json

Units: "easting" and "northing" in meters
Method: Pythagorean theorem
Line "flight 0" contains the coordinates of the initial deployment of helicopter
Assumptions:
1. Ingenuity’s position is taken as it is shown in JSON (upon arrival to the destination a/f)
2. Perseverance’s position is taken as it shown in JSON for the sol of flight or the closest preceding sol
3. Variables for LOS’es at the departure moment are taken from the same line. E.g.: for flight #9 we take sol 133 for helicopter and sol 131 for the rover.
4. To calculate LOS at the arrival the coordinates for helicopter are taken from the next line.

QUESTION
My calculations of LOS for departure and arrival are surely wrong because the difference between ls_dep and ls_arr does not correlate with the known flight lengths. I know I'm a dummy)) but this knowledge does not help me to find out where I was mistaken. I also attach the XLS file to ease the examination.
Thank for your kind help in advance.

--Cherurbino

Attached thumbnail(s)

 

Attached File(s)

 M20_waypoints_17_.xls ( 89K ) Number of downloads: 79

 

[tau]

. . . QUESTION
My calculations of LOS for departure and arrival are surely wrong because the difference between ls_dep and ls_arr does not correlate with the known flight lengths.

If by "LOS" you mean the distance between the rover and the helicopter (which the formulas in your table suggest), then I don't understand why the difference between the distances before and after the flight should correlate with the flight length.
For example, if the helicopter flies on a circle around the rover, the difference between the distances remains zero, but the flight length can take any value.
Generally, the only restriction for geometric reasons is that the flight length cannot be shorter than the difference in distances.

3. Variables for LOS’es at the departure moment are taken from the same line. E.g.: for flight #9 we take sol 133 for helicopter and sol 131 for the rover.
4. To calculate LOS at the arrival the coordinates for helicopter are taken from the next line.

Obviously, the official sol numbers are assigned to the arrival positions. Therefore, in this case, the helicopter took off from position 120, so the helicopter's departure coordinates should be taken from the previous (sol 120) row in the table and the arrival coordinates from the current (sol 133) row.
For sols where both the rover and the helicopter have moved, the question remains as to which moved first. If the helicopter moved first, then the rover was possibly still at its previous position and not at the position with the same sol number as the flight ( but I'm not sure about that) .

[Keltos]

Flight 24 happened sol 398

(Sol 398 of the Perseverance rover mission) at the local mean solar time of 09:33:47.


images are on the server

[Phil Stooke]

Yes - it was a very short flight, maybe 30 m to the west. Not over the Skycrane.

Phil

[Phil Stooke]

I underestimated the distance, it was about 47 m, still quite short.

Phil

[tau]

An interesting status report "Balancing Risks in the 'Séítah' Region - Flight 24" is online.
Various flight limitations are discussed in the report, and it was decided that the next flight will be a long one.

Here comes my updated mutual visibility map for the radio antennas as seen from the helicopter's current (sol 398) and planned positions.
The short flight on sol 398 has a beneficial side-effect. It opened a window (blue circle) of unobstructed radio link
from the helicopter's current position AND the planned landing position to the planned rover traverse .

[PaulH51]

5 NavCam frames from flight #25 (Sol 403) animated GIF.