We’ll have to wait a little longer to see the first Mars helicopter take off.
NASA originally planned to launch its first Red Planet flight Speed Helicopter – the very first powered flight on a world beyond the earth – on Sunday (April 11). However, a high-speed rock test on Friday (April 9) does not go as planned, pushes the debut back until the earliest Wednesday (April 14).
After analyzing the issue over the weekend, the Ingenuity team concluded “that minor modification and reinstallation of Ingenuity’s flight control software is the strongest way forward,” officials from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California said. , which manages Ingenuities. technology demonstration mission, wrote in an update Monday (April 12).
“Our best estimate of a targeted flight date is currently fluent, but we are working to reach these milestones and will set a flight date next week,” NASA officials wrote in the update.
Related: Watch NASA’s Mars helicopter ingenuity test its blades! (video)
Validate the software change and radiate it to the 4 lb. (1.8 kilograms) helicopter via NASA Perseverance, will take some time, officials added. A detailed timeline is still being worked out and the team plans to set a new flight date next week.
“We are confident in the team’s ability to work through this challenge and prepare for Ingenuity’s historic first controlled, powered flight on another planet,” officials wrote. Ingenuity remains healthy and stable, and its key systems such as power and communication work properly, they added.
Perseverance and ingenuity landed in Mars in the 28-kilometer-wide (45-kilometer) Jezero crater on February 18. On April 3, the solar helicopter sat out of the belly of the car and began to suck up the Mars sun for the first time.
After they started, Ingenuity went through a series of pre-checkouts. The helicopter went through all of these tests, except for the last one – Friday’s spin-off, which was aimed at getting Ingenuity’s two rotors up to 2400 revolutions per minute, the same rotational speed they would achieve during the flight.
But during the test, “the command series that controls the test ended early due to a ‘watchdog’ timer,” NASA officials said. written in a statement on Saturday (April 10). “This happened while trying to switch the flight computer from ‘Flight’ to ‘Flight’.”
Ingenuity has two cameras, but no scientific instruments. Its main task is to indicate that a powered flight on Mars is possible, which will possibly open up a new mode of exploration on the Red Planet. If Ingenuity’s month-long flight campaign is successful, the future Mars missions are can mostly include helicopters NASA officials have said they are looking for robbers or as data collectors in their own right.
Perseverance supports Ingenuity’s test campaign – the mission team must send communications to and from the helicopter through the rover – and will also try to record high-resolution footage of its flights.
As the helicopter team worked out Ingenuity’s issues, JPL officials said perseverance would continue to study nearby rock targets and prepare for a test of another technology demonstration – the Mars Oxygen In Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE), ‘ a tool on the Rover designed to generate oxygen from the carbon dioxide-dominated Martian atmosphere.
Once Ingenuity completes its flights, Perseverance will focus fully on its own mission, which has two main objectives: to seek evidence of ancient life on the floor of the Jezero Crater, which long ago offered a lake and a river delta , and the collection of dozens of samples for future return to earth.
Mike Wall is the author of “Out there“(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.