WASHINGTON – Dust storms and changing seasons will limit NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter’s ability to fly for the next few months, a project engineer said on May 27.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory released a video on May 27 made up of images taken by Ingenuity in a record flight on April 8. During this flight, the helicopter traveled 704 meters at a speed of 5.5 meters per second, the longest and fastest flight so far for a small helicopter.
This flight was the 25th for Ingenuity, which was originally scheduled to fly no more than five flights in a few weeks in April 2021. The last flight of the helicopter and the 28th in total was on 29 April.
However, Ingenuity lost communication with the rover Perseverance, which serves as a relay between the helicopter and the Earth’s controllers, on May 3. The contact was restored two days later, with engineers concluding that the rover had gone into a “low power” state when its battery levels fell below the lower limit.
In a statement on May 6, JPL said the increased dust in the atmosphere was blocking sunlight, reducing the power that Ingenuity’s solar panels could generate. The lab said it was taking steps to reduce the use of the helicopter’s battery, such as reducing the temperature at which the helicopter turns on heaters.
“We hope to be able to accumulate battery power to return to nominal operations and continue our mission in the coming weeks,” said Teddy Tsanetos, head of Ingenuity’s team at JPL, in a statement on May 6. In a video release for the flight on May 27, JPL said only that “the team is looking forward to its next flight to Mars.”
“We are currently going through the worst season of the Martian dust storm. The sky is full of dust and the generation of solar mass has greatly decreased, “said Jaako Karas, Ingenuity’s chief engineer, after a presentation on May 27 at the National Space Society’s International Space Development Conference. However, he said Ingenuity is now heading for winter, with less solar energy and lower temperatures.
“The hope is that if we can survive both,” he said, given the dust storms and winter, “in a few months we will begin to return to the Martian spring, where we will be very positive again. and back to business. “
This will limit Ingenuity’s ability to continue flying. Karas said there may be changes the mission can make, such as parking the helicopter on a slope to increase the amount of sunlight reaching the arrays, an approach previously used for solar rovers such as Spirit and Opportunity. However, he noted that it may be difficult to land the helicopter on the right slope. So far, the helicopter is “mostly pressed,” he said.
He did not see how long it would be before Ingenuity flew again and how often. “It will certainly be at least a few months before we return to the more luxurious energy levels we are used to,” he said.
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