On a dusty red planet almost 290 million km away... NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter flies NASA's Ingenuity today hovered in the skies of Mars making the equipment the first human-made helicopter to take flight on another planet. Amid cheers in the control room, engineers confirmed the diminutive helicopter had spun up its rotors, taken off, landed, and spun everything down, leaving the stage set for further tests. …
It may well be able to survive for a while (until the batteries get tired enough that they can't hold enough charge to keep it warm overnight and/or until enough crud accumulates on the solar panel), but unless it is close to Perseverance it's an orphan, and no-one will hear it die.
Umm, Perseverance is the one with the laser, so if the NSA is worried about anything 'going rogue' it is probably Ingenuity, not Persey.
Of course we don't know whether the FBI have logged on to either of them to remove those nasty malware thingies* the federal judge said they could delete...
(https://www.theregister.com/2021/04/14/fbi_exchange_server_malware_deletion/ )
*I do hope I'm not being too technical for you ;o)
I wonder if a subsequent flight might fly over Perseverance to try to blow some of the dust off of its solar cells which, last I read, were under performing.
Whatever happens from here, I'm just space nerded out. A pint seems too little, maybe a Kitty Hawk Growlers to Go for the boffins.
BTW a short clip of the actual flight from Perseverance's mast camera is at:
https://mars.nasa.gov/resources/25828/first-video-of-nasas-ingenuity-mars-helicopter-in-flight/
Perseverance, like Curiosity before it, is nuclear powered. Even if it was solar powered, that's a manoeuvre far too risky to consider!
Um, less.
There were Jet engines before WII and also a Liquid Oxygen-Hydrogen rocket motor was tested in the early 1930s.
OTOH, the LAST manned Moon landing was nearly 50 years ago.
It's a good achievement and indeed it's impossible to say what will be happening in 40 years time.
Double Squee! I dont know quite why but this gives me a buzz I haven't had since the first moon landing.. I do hope they dont get bored with it and drop it after 30 days. It got to be one of the best ways of exploring the area around the rover and may indeed stop the dog treading in some shit and losing a claw.
Ingenuity is a tech demo aimed at proving that it is possible to build a drone that can fly on Mars. Basically it has proved that now, so NASA could move on. As it happens they want to try some additional flights with longer flight distances, perhaps as far as a couple of hundred metres, but sadly are not planning to use Ingenuity beyond the 30 day limit. It only carries a couple of fixed-direction cameras; no other science payload at all, so it has limited utility.
Saying that, if it is still health after 30 days and the batteries have enough capacity, it would not surprise me if someone in NASA decided to use it as some form of scout, at least until it finally failed.
Hopefully if it does last in a flyable condition after 30 days they will see just how much longer that hardware configuration can survive the extremes of heat and cold and radiation. The article says they used off-the-shelf components not hardened for use in such a harsh environment, so finding out how long they last could be useful.
Of course if it could be a danger to Persey then they will have to shut it down.
As I understand it, the bandwidth issue was between Perseverance and Ingenuity and probably that's only a problem when downloading "big" data like video/photos from the cameras, whereas (I'm guessing here) that the commands and telemetry data are easier to manage?
In part, I suppose I'm just hoping the above is true! If it is, then (hopefully) Ingenuity can be kept within range of Perseverance simply to (1). give data as to the longevity of it's components, and (2). allow the potential of using it's cameras to look a little further ahead than Perseverance can on it's own.
Finger crossed! :)
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Watched it as the feed came in from the NASA site. Pretty amazing stuff when you think about it. Loved seeing all the views of the shell console stuff (nerdy I know), but seeing the telemetry data on the graph and the first image(s) was awesome. The reaction from the boffins was nice too. So glad it made its baby hop successfully.
3 hours for information to come back? They must have trained on a remote VMWare console if my experience is anything to go by! </joke>
Beer for Boffins as always -->
Yup, can't have aliens turning up to wipe out humanity using Linux in their spaceship. I mean, how would it be possible to defeat them by uploading a virus if they're using something decent?
Mine's the one with a Windows 3.10 disc set in the pocket...
Stick a paper bag outside the ISS and you can probably collect enough oxygen for a breath. We can have an argument about where space begins, but I refuse to concede that anything afflicted by atmospheric drag is in "deep space".
Clearly, only one icon for this story--------------------->
Both deep space and space are mentioned...
but the article (rather than quotes within) says:
"NASA’s Mars 2020 mission is the first one to use an open source OS like Linux in space."
Or at least it did when I first read it, and when I just checked.
it's a fair bet you'll find a great deal of software written for RPis (and other things Linux-powered) that are well tested and come in handy for making the drone copter work.
I have sometimes considered whether a home-built hybrid rocket capable of leaving earth's gravity could use Celestia as a basis for its navigation system... [not like I could really build that but still, how WOULD you navigate up there?]. If nothing else, Celestia could make a good basis for a flight simulator to train astro-pilots.
In any case, might as well just say it: TUX! IN! SPAAaaaace!!!
When he started developing linux, I bet Linus never envisioned seeing a flying penguin on Mars.
Doing well so far. I've seen all to many model helicopters end up doing the dead chicken dance at the slightest excuse.
If I recall the definition correctly: Helicopter: Thousands of parts all trying to kill you.
I wonder if you could make it follow Perseverance as it roves?
Because Samsung mobiles were mentioned, I'm imagining some part of the SoC firmware trying to detect a face (and a smile) every time a photo is taken.
So... I suspect the "follow mode" would only work if someone had thought to paint a face on Perseverance!! :D
I think there is a bit of a difference in the "wear and tear" in each case. For Spirit and Opportunity the point was for them to be there for a reasonable amount of time and to travel a reasonable distance to make it all worth while. With a combination of good design, careful operation, making everything a bit bigger/stronger (i.e. "rounding up" on the specs of everything they could) and, to be realistic, a bit of luck they vastly exceeded the design life.
But Ingenuity is a tech demonstrator. It is the smallest, lightest thing that they could build that could plausibly function. If it had failed completely it wouldn't have effected the primary mission (but would obviously have been hugely disappointing for the 'copter team). But the battery is going to get treated really harshly - it's in a very cold environment, it is going to get charged slowly over a day or so (whilst being partially discharged overnight to try and keep everything warm) and then it is going to get _savagely_ discharged during each flight. I'm sure they will be analysing the battery/power data really carefully and optimising everything they can but basically this is textbook "how not to make your battery last" cycling (well, at least the charging is slow I suppose). At some point (sadly soon) it won't be able to accumulate (and keep) enough charge each day to make up for the losses overnight and still have some spare to accumulate for a flight.
But, yes, here's hoping that they get plenty more flights before that happens!
The rate at which bits can be transferred to Perseverance at 200kb is very slow. Why not choose to transmit at a faster rate? Surely the hardware could have been capable. Is it an attempt to keep the power requirements really low so it does not affect Perseverance in some way?
I'm sure there will be a reason it's just not being mentioned since most people don't really care that much. El Reg readers being a slightly odder breed like to know the details.
Myself I'd like to know what NASA plan to do with the drone if it does last beyond it's planned life. I'm sure they've given some thought as to how to use it if it proves tougher than expected. I doubt they'd just say "ok it flew now dump it".
If nothing else it's a nice bit of PR to humanise the probes as little companions.
On wikipedia they state that it is using the ZigBee protocol. I think that is pretty slow but has decent range. Also, they would want something omnidirectional so there is no need to aim antennas, etc. By the time you've done "simple, reliable, omnidirectional, range of up to 1km, etc." the bitrate is going to get quite low.
Anyone who has looked into going beyond domestic WiFi to get long distance comms for IoT sensors, for example, is used to thinking of communications requirements like "100 bytes a day" as design targets if you want simple to deploy, omnidirectional, low power, range over 1km here on Earth.
Sure, on Mars there are no needs to be confined to the ISM bands (although using off-the-shelf gear will probably force that by limiting to things like ZigBee or LoRaWAN) and there are fewer of those annoying pillars of water (which the humans call "trees") around .
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