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Not a good day for space missions 😞

During a short up and down Flight 72, Mars helicopter Ingenuity lost its comm link with rover Perseverance. NASA engineers are working on restoring it.

This follows Flight 71 on Jan 6 which made an emergency landing 35 seconds into a 125 sec flight; apparently the relatively featureless sandy terrain proved difficult for its navigation system.

Meanwhile, Voyager 1 is still sending garbled data.

Stay tuned.

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

Mars helicopter Ingenuity communicates with rover Perseverance using the ultra-low-power Zibgee protocol standard over a 914 MHz link.

Data rate: up to 250 kbps
Range: up to 1 km
Antenna: Monopole, omni-directional, 7.3 cm tall, 1 mm thick, gold-plated stainless steel
Telecom subsystem mass < 14 g, incl. cables and antenna
Electronics: Commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) radio and processor elements, not radiation hardened!

researchgate.net/publication/3
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zigbee

2/n

Good news from JPL - the Mars helicopter team managed to reestablish contact with Ingenuity after its comm loss since the middle of Flight 72. The team is reviewing data to better understand the root cause of the comm outage.

This was accomplished by "instructing Mars rover Perseverance to perform long-duration listening sessions for Ingenuity’s signal."

Let's take a look at what that means.


3/n

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.

Ingenuity and Perseverance turn on their comm systems and talk during certain pre-determined periods of the day (e.g., at the top of the hour), to conserve power. Ingenuity initiates the call.

For this to work, both systems need to have "wall-clocks" (i.e., the date/time counter) whose values match closely.

Since Ingenuity's clock got reset and restarted due to the low power condition, the times when Ingenuity and Perseverance attempted to communicate with each other no longer matched.

5/n

The solution to this problem caused by unsynchronized clocks is obvious - configure Perseverance to keeps its comm. system continuously turned on for a few hours!

That's what they did on May 5, 2022. A few hours later, Percy received Ingenuity's call, exchanged status info. and promptly set Ingenuity's clock to the correct value.

This is what JPL must have done today - "instructing Perseverance to perform long-duration listening sessions for Ingenuity’s signal."

I doubt they use NTP 🕰️

6/n

FYI - the Ingenuity team did not know in May 2022 that time-sync loss was the problem and not something more catastrophic, but they had anticipated such events and had a bag of solutions to try.

Also, part of the solution to the May 2022 problem was to lower Ingenuity's thermostat at night, so that the heating system consumed less power and the electronics could stay up (in low power mode) all night. The thermostat setting was restored once solar insolation levels rose to normal levels.

7/n

Mars Helicopter Ingenuity was just a 30-day technology demonstration mission to test powered, controlled flight on another world.

Ingenuity completed its tech demo phase after the 3rd flight on April 25, 2021. After another 2 flights, it transitioned to a new operations demonstration phase.

Almost 3 years later, Ingenuity has completed 72 flights and is still going strong in support of the overall mission.

Overachiever much?
👏

mars.nasa.gov/technology/helic

8/n

Sad news - Mars helicopter Ingenuity suffered some rotor damage during flight 72 on Jan 18 and its mission has now ended.

It will fly no more although its instruments and comm. systems are operational (the image below was sent on Jan 23).

Ingenuity gave new meaning to the word overachiever. It's legacy will live on in all future missions with helicopters.

It's possible that the damage started in flight 71, as reported by @65dBnoise .

jpl.nasa.gov/news/after-three-

9/n

Mars Helicopter Ingenuity was just a 30-day tech. demo. mission to test powered, controlled flight on another world, with 5 test flights.

Almost 3 years later, Ingenuity completed 72 flights and would have trudged on if not for this rotor damage.

The map below shows Ingenuity's adventurous path thru Jezero Crater in the past 3 years.

Perseverance will move on soon and Ingenuity will no longer be able to communicate without it 😢

mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/mission
mars.nasa.gov/technology/helic

10/n

Those are sizeable chunks of Ingenuity's rotor blades lopped off 😬

Ingenuity cannot image its rotors with its 2 ground- facing cameras, but it can and often does, image their shadows.

The shadow images below show the ends of the rotor blades before and after the mishap. A sizable piece is missing in the recent images. Images 1 and 2 actually show two different damaged rotors.

Quite likely, the rotors clipped a rock or the ground.

More images at mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/multime


11/n

This sequence of images of Ingenuity's shadow taken on Jan 26, 2024, clearly show 2 different damaged rotor blades.

Damaged rotor blade #2 appears in the 3rd image. This is the one we have all seen in the color image in NASA's news release.

It's doubtful the shadow of the other 2 rotor blades can be seen w/o rotation. Percy could help.

The damage is severe and was probably caused by the carbon composite rotors striking a rock or the ground.

mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/multime

12/n

We may have the first image of the grounded Mars Helicopter Ingenuity :mastodance:

These images were acquired on Feb. 4, 2024 (Sol 1052) at the local mean solar time of 13:05:00 and 13:05:37, by rover Perseverance facing NW.

I did some rudimentary processing on the image by increasing contrast. The experts will soon do much more sophisticated processing to show Ingenuity standing tall in spite of its broken wings more clearly.

mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/multime

13/n

Here are the two images taken yesterday by Mars rover Perseverance stitched together for a more dramatic effect.

Ingenuity looks tiny in this vast landscape, but this is the harsh landscape and terrain that Ingenuity hopped across and navigated using its own eyes for over 3 years, surviving extreme temperatures, sandstorms and some failed parts.
👏
mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/multime

14/n

How could sand ripples on Mars have potentially caused Ingenuity's rotor blades to get lopped off so badly?

The foam core + carbon fiber rotor blades are 1.21 meters in diameter, rotating at 2,400-2900 rpm. At 2,400 rpm, the tips of the blades are moving at a whopping 152 m/sec or 547.4 km/h! At that speed, any obstruction will cause the relatively brittle blades to break.

mars.nasa.gov/technology/helic
core.ac.uk/download/pdf/323104

15/n

Matching the image from Perseverance with the map of the region, it appears that Ingenuity landed on a steep slope at the top of a sand ripple where it damaged its rotor blades. The end of Flight 71 (an emergency landing) and the start of Flight 72 was at a relatively level area between sand ripples, perhaps tilted a bit to the west.

Flight 72 was supposed to be a simple up and down test flight. Why did it drift west by about 10 m?

mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/mission

16/n

A quick reminder that Mars Helicopter Ingenuity is not dead. It is very much alive, wiggling its rotors and sending back valuable data and images via Perseverance.

The following are two images of rotor blade shadows from a sequence of images taken on Jan 31, while the rotors were being wiggled. The rotational movement was small. The priority for the team must be to diagnose the root cause of the failure, before Perseverance moves out of range.

mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/multime

17/n

@AkaSci This is a *really* informative thread — thanks!

@AkaSci

Raw images (Jan 21, 2024)
NavCam = 11061
RTE = 555

@AkaSci

I use a bespoke importJSON script to import the data into a Google spreadsheet. The mission image server has had issues for the past 2 days but the import function is still working from the RSS feed at the moment. although it was down yesterday. I only import the Heli image data. I hope JPL will address the image server fairly quickly, it's also broken a couple of pages that use their data...

@AkaSci Filtering is now working (in a fashion), but there are still issues for other pages using the API)... Today's count is 11061 NavCams and 556 RTE's. I'm trying to work out where the additional RTE is :)

@AkaSci
Here's the data I extract from the first 70 flights. It's taken from the mission JSON files. I have not included flight 71 or 72 as JPL have not issued the waypoints JSON yet (probably because 71 was an emergency landing and 72 lost comms) I'll update the table with the data from 71 and 72 once JPL update the JSON's, but the image count is correct.

@AkaSci
Typical JPL engineering:
"We are building it for an X day mission"
Day X * 5:
"God, when will this thing die?"

@AkaSci How many fluid were planned in the beginning?

@freemin7
See post #8 in this thread.

@AkaSci @65dBnoise from the image the damage doesn't seem too severe, I'm wondering if they could still fly it.

@AkaSci wait... so can they use ingenuity as an anemometer and take weather readings?

@barrygoldman1
I guess so ... so far as Ingenuity's electronics remain in working condition and its batteries get charged.

Also, once Perseverance moves out of range, Ingenuity can no longer receive commands or send data.

@AkaSci was thinking, it's not dead, yet, but it's definitely on its last leg. I dunno how well they'd feel about trying to spin it up again full power just to see if it'll tear itself apart or make really sketchy short hops, destructive testing could be a fun sendoff for this generation of mars helicopter.

at this point I'm not sure if having it sit static in the sand has much "scientific purpose", Perseverance will lose a lil buddy but will persevere.

@AkaSci
Nah. It collided with an alien spacecraft.

@AkaSci it could be the same thing this time... but the latest dropout started *during* a flight. If the battery hit the critical "enter low-power mode NOW" level while above the ground it may not be in a 100% flyable state anymore :/

[source: am drone engineer on Earth, have accidentally cut motor power in flight before and observed the effects]