#Ingenuity isn't merely a drone humming away in the thin air of another planet. It is actually a breakthrough in space technology, because it provides:
1) a different transportation mode with completely different operational parameters and flexibility
2) strong evidence that much cheaper/quicker deployed/higher risk missions are very possible
Extra bonus: all this is done using mostly off-the-shelf components. And #Linux.
And a great engineering team, of course!
Here is the latest flight 29:
@65dBnoise
Awesome! Go, Ginny, go!! 🚁 🚁
And #Ingenuity had enough power after the flight to download all those navcam images, too.
If the commercial components have lasted this long in the frigid Martian temperatures without heaters, then there's good hope it will make it through the winter.
@tom30519 I wanted to speculate that this "drunk driver" path #Perseverance took yesterday was to find a better spot for a radio link with the heli, but ended up mentioning my many failures to guess the reasons behind Perseverance erratic behavior in the past.😜
@65dBnoise
You could very well be right, since that move put #Ingenuity's base station antenna in an optimum position. However, #Perseverance has been leaving confused tracks since sol 471 at least! Perhaps Percy is learning how to parallel park... 😃
Mastcam-Z R Sol 471 LMST:10:14:23
Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU
@65dBnoise
That 10 RTE images from #Ingenuity flight 23 were able to be transferred from the heli to #Perseverance lends weight to your speculation about Percy finding a good location for the radio link. 🤔
The images were rotated 180° to align more or less with the flight path to the west, and show a glimpse of the shadow correctly to the right. North is approx. up.
Animation played at 5fps.
The images were undistorted using Aurélien Genin's (https://twitter.com/Astro_Aure) image correction scripts: https://github.com/kmgill/mars-raw-utils-data/tree/61a3b4477b541d4749c66b348c2098a931369d93/caldata
Image details:
HELI_NAV
RMC: 29_1, Sol: 465
LMST: 15:28:52
UTC: 2022-06-11T15:07:16
Credit: #NASA/JPL-Caltech
Received:2022-06-23T16:28:51Z
#Mars2020 #Space