NASA‘s Ingenuity was set for its farthest and fastest flight yet, but the helicopter did not liftoff from the surface of Mars Thursday as planned.
The 18-inch tall copter was set to take off from ‘Wright Brothers Field’ under the watchful gaze of the Perseverance rover at 10:12 EDT (15:12 BST), and soar up 16ft into the sky.
Data returned during a downlink at 1:21pm EDT that showed the copter did not transition to flight mode – meaning it never left the ground.
‘Aim high, and fly, fly again. The Mars Helicopter’s ambitious fourth flight didn’t get off the ground, but the team is assessing the data and will aim to try again soon. We’ll keep you posted,’ reads an update from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Twitter account Thursday afternoon.
NASA has rescheduled the fourth flight for Friday, April 30 at 10:46am EDT (15:12 BST), with the first data expected back at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California at 1:39pm EDT.
NASA ‘s Ingenuity was set for its farthest, fastest and flight yet, but the helicopter did not liftoff from the surface of Mars on Thursday as planned. Data returned during a downlink at 1:21pm EDT that showed the copter did not transition to flight mode – meaning it never left the ground
NASA says an issue was identified in the copter earlier this month that showed each time it flies there is a 15 percent chance it will not kick on flight mode.
‘Today’s delay is in line with that expectation and does not prevent future flights,’ NASA shared in the announcement.
The space agency said it would continue to push the four-pound copter to its limit in each subsequent test, this time almost doubling the speed of the third flight.
Due to delays in sending data from the 187 million miles between Jezero crater on Mars and NASA JPL in California, the team waits in suspense for three hours or so.
NASA has rescheduled the fourth flight for Friday, April 30 at 10:46am EDT (15:12 BST), with the first data expected back at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California at 1:39pm EDT.
Ingenuity completed its third (pictured) powered flight on Mars on April 25. The copter covered a light distance of 164 feet while hitting speeds of 4.5mpg
The small craft achieved all of its goals including flight duration, distance and speed, in the first three trips – so the fourth will ‘push the envelope’ beyond what the small rotorcraft was designed to achieve by NASA JPL engineers.
The fourth flight will see it fly up to 16ft, head south over rocks, sand ripples and impact craters for 276ft and use its navigation camera to collect images of the surface every four feet.
The Perseverance rover will be watching the fourth flight unfold from about 210 feet away, as it did with the previous flights. The third flight captured an image of the SUV-sized rover as it soared 16ft overhead.
Flying on Mars is particularly challenging due to the fact its atmosphere is just one percent of Earth’s at ground level, and while the lower gravity, a third of that on Earth, helps, it is only a partial offset against the thinner atmosphere.
This means that in order to fly, the helicopter has be ultra-light and rotate its blades extremely fast in order to achieve lift. For today’s test flight the blades spun to 2,500rpm, allowing it to hover 10 feet off the ground.
The drone was designed as a technical demonstration to see if a flying component would be viable and possible for future planetary science and exploration missions.
It has no science equipment on board, beyond a navigation camera and a horizon camera in full color.
Ingenuity made history on April 19 when it became the first powered craft to take off and land on another world, something NASA dubbed its ‘Wright Brothers moment’.
It travelled up 10ft into the air, hovered and then landed back on Martian soil on the landing site the agency has since named after the famed airplane inventors.
For the second flight Ingenuity went higher and further than during the first, travelling 16ft into the air, hovering and accelerating 7ft sideways.
The third flight pushed this a step further, also going up 16ft, then travelling 164ft at 4.5 miles per hour, before landing back down on the surface of Mars.
‘From millions of miles away, Ingenuity checked all the technical boxes we had at NASA about the possibility of powered, controlled flight at the Red Planet,’ said Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division.
‘Future Mars exploration missions can now confidently consider the added capability an aerial exploration may bring to a science mission.’
Mars Perseverance rover and Ingenuity helicopter are exploring Jezero crater on the Red Planet
The Ingenuity team had three objectives to accomplish to declare the technology demo a complete success.
They completed the first objective about six years ago when the team demonstrated in the 25-foot-diameter space simulator chamber of JPL that powered, controlled flight in the thin atmosphere of Mars was more than a theoretical exercise.
The second objective – to fly on Mars – was met when Ingenuity flew for the first time on April 19.
The team surpassed the last major objective with the third flight, when Ingenuity rose 16 feet, flying downrange 164 feet and back at a top speed of 6.6 feet per second – even snapping a photo of Perseverance along the way.
The Perseverance rover will be watching the fourth flight unfold from about 210ft away, as it did with the previous flights. The third flight captured an image of the SUV-sized rover as it soared 16ft overhead
‘When Ingenuity’s landing legs touched down after that third flight, we knew we had accumulated more than enough data to help engineers design future generations of Mars helicopters,’ said J. ‘Bob’ Balaram, Ingenuity chief engineer at JPL.
‘Now we plan to extend our range, speed, and duration to gain further performance insight,’ and see how far the small craft can be pushed.
Flight Four sets out to demonstrate the potential value of that aerial perspective to future planetary science missions, according to NASA.
The flight test will begin with Ingenuity climbing to an altitude of 16ft and then heading south, flying over rocks, sand ripples, and small impact craters for 276ft.
As it flies, the rotorcraft will use its downward-looking navigation camera to collect images of the surface every 4ft until it travels a total of 436 feet downrange.
Then, Ingenuity will go into a hover and take images with its color high-definition camera before heading back to Wright Brothers Field to land.
‘To achieve the distance necessary for this scouting flight, we’re going to break our own Mars records set during flight three,’ said Johnny Lam, backup pilot for the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter at NASA JPL.
NASA has named this vantage point overlooking Wright Brothers Field the ‘Van Zyl Overlook’ after Jakob van Zyl, a longterm member of the Perseverance team who died unexpectedly in August 2020, a month after the vehicle left the Earth
Ingenuity as seen on Mars on April 7, 2021 in a photo taken by the rover Perseverance. The small craft has completed all expected mission objectives
‘We’re upping the time airborne from 80 seconds to 117, increasing our max airspeed from 4.5 mph to 8 mph, and more than doubling our total range.’
The SUV-sized Perseverance rover will be watching the flight unfold from the ‘Van Zyl Overlook’ named after Jakob van Zyl, a long-term member of the Perseverance team who died unexpectedly in August 2020, a month after the vehicle left the Earth.
After receiving the data from the fourth flight, the Ingenuity team will consider its plan for the fifth flight.
‘We have been kicking around several options regarding what a flight five could look like,’ said Balaram. ‘But ask me about what they entail after a successful flight four. The team remains committed to building our flight experience one step at a time.’
The flight will be autonomous, pre-programmed into the aircraft because of the 15 minutes it takes for signals to travel from Earth to Mars
The rotors on the 18inch tall vehicle are 4ft in diameter and the craft includes solar panels that charge lithium-ion batteries.
It has a 30 day lifespan, with a total of five flights expected in that time – the final flight is due to happen before the end of May, assuming it survives flight four.
The Ingenuity experiment will end one month from the first flight in order to let Perseverance return to its main task: searching for signs of past microbial life on Mars.
NASA MARS 2020: THE MISSION WILL SEE THE PERSEVERANCE ROVER AND INGENUITY HELICOPTER SEARCH FOR LIFE
NASA’s Mars 2020 mission will search for signs of ancient life on the Red Planet in a bid to help scientists better understand how life evolved on Earth.
Named Perseverance, the main car-sized rover will explore an ancient river delta within the Jezero Crater, which was once filled with a 1,600ft deep lake.
It is believed that the region hosted microbial life some 3.5 to 3.9 billion years ago and the rover will examine soil samples to hunt for evidence of the life.
Nasa’s Mars 2020 rover (artist’s impression) will search for signs of ancient life on Mars in a bid to help scientists better understand how life evolved on our own planet
The $2.5 billion (£1.95 billion) Mars 2020 spaceship launched on July 30 with the rover and helicopter inside – and landed successfully on February 18, 2021.
Perseverance landed inside the crater and will collect samples that will eventually be returned to Earth for further analysis.
A second mission will fly to the planet and return the samples, perhaps by the later 2020s in partnership with the European Space Agency.
This concept art shows the Mars 2020 rover landing on the red planet via NASA’s ‘sky-crane’ system
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