NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) said Monday night that its Ingenuity Mars helicopter needed a software update and that a new date for its historic flight would be announced next week.
In a release, the agency said the Ingenuity team had identified a software solution to the ‘commando issue’ first discovered on Friday, April 9, during one of its last rotor tests – a ‘fast’ spin-up test ‘”- before the flight date previously announced on 11 April.
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JPL said that over the past weekend it had tested several potential solutions and determined that ‘minor modification and reinstallation of Ingenuity’s flight control software is the strongest way forward.’
The planned update will change the way the helicopter’s two flight controllers start, allowing both hardware and software to ‘safely transition to flight mode’.
In addition, he noted that although the adaptations to the flight software and its development are ‘simple’, it is expected that the validation of the changes and the completion of the uplink to Ingenuity will take some time, and that a timeline for the rescheduling of the helicopter’s tests are still in progress.
In order to achieve the desired outcome and move the new software to the vehicle, the team will need to develop, validate and upload software, load the software on the Ingenuity flight controllers and launch it on the new software.
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“After we have passed these milestones, we are preparing Ingenuity for its first flight, which will take several solos, or Mars days. Our best estimate of a targeted flight date is currently fluid, but we are working to reach these milestones and set a flight date next week, ‘the team said.
“We are confident in the team’s ability to work through this challenge and prepare for Ingenuity’s historic first controlled flight on another planet,” JPL said.
It noted that ingenuity remains healthy on the red planet, with critical features remaining stable, and that challenges are not unexpected with a ‘high-risk-high-reward’ approach.
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“Meanwhile, while the Ingenuity team is doing its job, Perseverance will continue to do science with its range of instruments and they are ready for a test of the MOXIE technology demonstration,” he said.
NASA said Ingenuity deployed to the Martian surface and survived its first night outside the rover last week. Perseverance successfully landed on Mars on Thursday, February 18th.