Ingenuity- Mars 2020 Helicopter, Deployment & Operations Options

[scalbers]

Pretty spectacular imagery. One might of course wonder if the comms ability is related to the line-of-sight into Neretva Vallis.

[nprev]

Update!

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[MahFL]

Good news.

[mcaplinger]

https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/after-thr...r-mission-ends/

NASA’s history-making Ingenuity Mars Helicopter has ended its mission at the Red Planet after surpassing expectations and making dozens more flights than planned. While the helicopter remains upright and in communication with ground controllers, imagery of its Jan. 18 flight sent to Earth this week indicates one or more of its rotor blades sustained damage during landing, and it is no longer capable of flight... Imagery revealing damage to the rotor blade arrived several days later. The cause of the communications dropout and the helicopter’s orientation at time of touchdown are still being investigated.

[climber]

Some insight by Eric Berger : https://x.com/sciguyspace/status/1750604332...BDnrYK92Xgb2RHg

[climber]

Broken rotor blade : https://x.com/nasajpl/status/17506274852918...BDnrYK92Xgb2RHg

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[MahFL]

Man what a shame, but she did good.

[nprev]

When I broke off comments on the Perseverance thread to start this one I thought it might be active for a month or two. Maybe. It was a novel high-risk experiment, and Mars is anything but forgiving.

787 posts, 344,000 thread views, and nearly three years later...never been happier to be proven so very, very wrong.

Ingenuity set new stratospherically high bars for engineering excellence. For project management and execution. For capturing the public imagination and the wonder of planetary exploration. For audacity. For almost anything you can name that represents the best within us as a species.

Deepest congratulations and thanks to the Ingenuity team. Your child of mind and effort was an irreplaceable gift to us all; she has earned her sleep.

[Tom Tamlyn]

That's an evocative image. I remember an early press conference, before Ingenuity's first flight, at which Chief Engineer Bob Balaram made it clear that no ground contact by the rotor blade would be survivable.

[Explorer1]

Looks like some shards are buried in that gouge.

At the teleconference they mentioned Perseverance will pass within a few hundred meters of the lander and take images, but they won't get closer since they still have their science mission. Once the remaining images are downloaded/ or they spin the rotors a little, we should have a better idea.

[Bill Harris]

After the Presser:

https://mars.nasa.gov/news/9540/after-three...r-mission-ends/

I expected them to try flight with that mangled blade, but the higher blade rpms required on Mars are much higher than required for terrestrial flight, and the imbalance might be destructive.
Leave Ginny as a memorial.

--Bill

[deedan06]

Its sad to hear it, but I guess we all knew it had to happen at some point. Three years instead of 1 month is a lot, even in comparison to other NASA machines that worked better than expected. Let's look forward to future Martian helicopters that ingenuity paved the way for.

[Bill Harris]

70-something flights is astoundingly epic and in the class is Spirit snd Oppy.
My model Perseverence based on and R/C co-axial.helicopter is still a joy to fly.

--Bill

[PDP8E]

This appears to be a lateral dig-and-drag of the landing strut (top left) in the sand -- bottom of the frame to the top
Whatever the rotors touched is off-frame.
GIF from the color camera



This GIF is from the down-look nav cam, the dig-and-drag is below the Helicopter,
Notice: that it looks like at least two rotors are damaged - the last frame shows the second damaged rotor coming into view

[vjkane]

This appears to be a lateral dig-and-drag of the landing strut (top left) in the sand -- bottom of the frame to the top
Whatever the rotors touched is off-frame.
GIF from the color camera



This GIF is from the down-look nav cam, the dig-and-drag is below the Helicopter,
Notice: that it looks like at least two rotors are damaged - the last frame shows the second damaged rotor coming into view

I wonder how Ingenuity landed with this much damage to its rotors and also remained upright. Will be interesting to read the final assessments.