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AkaSci 🛰️

This incident sounds very similar to a comm. outage that occurred in May 2022.

Then, increased atmospheric dust caused a reduction in solar panel output. One night, battery capacity fell low enough that a controller chip was automatically powered off as a safety measure.

Consequently, Ingenuity's time-of-day clock get reset.

That led to a failure to communicate with Perseverance, when power levels came back to normal.

Why?

mars.nasa.gov/technology/helic
4/n

mars.nasa.govNASA’s Ingenuity in Contact With Perseverance Rover After Communications Dropout - NASAOn Thursday, May 5, mission controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory received confirmation that the agency’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter had re-established communications with the Perseverance rover.