NASA will reduce the number of Ingenuity’s flights during the winter
(NASA/JPL)
The marscopter Ingenuity will save energy during the Martian winter, said NASA.
According to the agency, the drone will fly much less often, stop turning on the heaters at night, and every morning will recharge and reset its on-board computer.
Initially, NASA specialists expected Ingenuity to work on Mars for a month and make only five flights.
However, at the moment the drone is operating far beyond its design limits: it has completed 28 flights, including a total of almost 7 kilometers.
Ingenuity is undergoing a transition from late autumn to early winter: the marscopter can no longer maintain the level of available electricity necessary for full operation.
Since Sol 426, there were nightly battery outages, causing the electronics to reset and communication with Earth to lose.
Scientists expect the drop in temperature and dustiness of the atmosphere to continue until 600 sols, after which conditions will gradually improve.
Now the Perseverance team presented a new plan for working with the marscopter during the winter.
A short flight will take place in the following days, after which flights will be much less frequent.
Right now, the systems are copying all the data accumulated by the drone to the rover for their backup, then Ingenuity will perform a test spin-up of the propellers to high speeds.
During winter, to save electricity, the drone’s thermostat will not turn on at night, and the drone’s electronics will cool down to -80° C.
Every morning the drone will warm up, charge the battery and turn on the on-board computer again
Then, it will try to get in touch with the Perseverance rover. Only after all that, the marscopter will be ready to fly.
Source:
- NASA: https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter/status/382/ingenuity-adapts-for-mars-winter-operations/
- Space News: https://spacenews.com/ingenuity-hunkering-down-during-martian-dust-storms-and-winter/
#space #science #mars #ingenuity #nftmc #learnwithsteem #news
Hi @sarahjay1 ,Everything is very organized according to what I read, so it will be easy to do the job.
I think so too. However Mars could be an unpredictable beast, look at what happened to the poor InSight.
Greetings my friend, you should go a little deeper, the post should be more than 300 words long. Also it is only a tag in this case it must be science.
Thanks
@pelon53
Dear @pelon53, thank you very much for the feedback. I'll try to make my posts longer.
However, my entries are better understood in context, I daily post stuff about space and especially Mars exploration. So it's kinda redundant to make them longer just for the sake of having more words.
I'll post about other topics too so I can write more words. Muchas gracias nuevamente por el feedback, amigo.