Ingenuity- Mars 2020 Helicopter, Deployment & Operations Options

[mcaplinger]

the left side of the solar panel is pushed down 90 degrees.

No, you are seeing the remaining part of one of the lower blades. The solar panel is undamaged and undisturbed.

I think the detached blade is consistent with being the whole half of the upper blade, broken at or near the root.

Much clearer image at https://www.flickr.com/photos/semeion/53549974562/

[serpens]

Aah, clear now. I stand corrected.

[Bill Harris]

Yes, the blade end position and nearby impact mark indicate a straight line to Ingenuity's position. But the actual impact sequence is less clear. There seem to be two blade collision points (upper and lower?) and the left side of the solar panel is pushed down 90 degrees. Hard to see anything but a strike by an upper blade segment causing that and Tau's image seems to reveal only the inner section of the blade. Carbon fibre is strong and light but the blade tip speed is around 240mps and the velocity squared dominates in kinetic energy. I may be missing something but the impact outcomes on the blade seem complex, possibly a bend fracture then break at both the bend and the blade root, all at an impressive rotational velocity. Is there a missing part of the blade hiding somewhere?

It can be hard to say or visualize what a copter blade will do when impacting soft substrate at a low angle.
Ginny is down for the count but led a most excellent technology demonstration.

--Bill

[rlorenz]

It can be hard to say or visualize what a copter blade will do when impacting soft substrate at a low angle.

The interaction of the striking blade tip with the sand ripple, and its direct local effects on a composite structure, are indeed not well-constrained.

However, I suspect it is the other blade of that rotor that broke and was flung away. You can see this happen on lots of youtube videos of helicopter crashes, notably those where the blades hit water. The sudden angular deceleration of the rotor causes a huge bending moment at the root of the other blades, which feel strong compulsion from Newton's First Law.......

[climber]

I didn’t know that Ingenuity was still been collecting data potentially for up to 20 more years :
https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-ingenui...goodbye-for-now

[john_s]

What's not clear from that report is whether Perseverance might retrieve data accumulated so far when, for instance, it passes by Ingenuity on its way back from the rim to Three Forks. Odd that that possibility wasn't mentioned.

John

[Explorer1]

On the one hand, the transmitter would have to remain functioning by 2028 (if that does indeed become the plan for the sample return), and on the other, perhaps the rover might come back by another route?
If data can actually be gathered for such a long time, it will be a very impressive feat regardless!

[stevesliva]

The daily plan - one image, engineering data - apparently this can be done for >7000 days w/o running out of memory.

*That* said, it'd be amazing if it would even be long enough for another rover or lander to come within range.

The other point made is... it's all going on the nonvolatile memory chips. So even if it's dead, the flash should tell the tale of however many days it passes, if you can get to it physically. I suspect that would be at least 7000 days.

[tau]

Here are two more "very last" pictures of Ingenuity, taken on sol 1138 with Mastcam-Z and on sol 1139 with SuperCam Remote Micro-Imager.
The dark spots to the left of Ingenuity on the other side of the dune are presumably the first touchdown marks.
The lost rotor blade can be seen in the lower part of the SuperCam RMI image.