Ingenuity responds after 63 days of silence
Click for interactive map.
For the past two months the science and engineering teams for the Perseverance rover and the Ingenuity helicopter in Jezero Crater have been very silent as to the status of Ingenuity. On April 25, 2023 the Ingenuity team had posted their flight plan for the helicopter’s 52nd flight, with an expected flight date the next day.
Until today, however, no information about the results of that flight had been released. Except for one update in late May describing earlier issues with communications after flight 49, the science and engineering teams maintained radio silence about that 52nd flight in April.
Today’s update finally explained that silence:
The flight took place back on April 26, but mission controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California lost contact with the helicopter as it descended toward the surface for landing.
The Ingenuity team expected the communications dropout because a hill stood between the helicopter’s landing location and the Perseverance rover’s position, blocking communication between the two. The rover acts as a radio relay between the helicopter and mission controllers at JPL. In anticipation of this loss of communications, the Ingenuity team had already developed re-contact plans for when the rover would drive back within range. Contact was re-established June 28 when Perseverance crested the hill and could see Ingenuity again.
The flight plan for the 52nd flight in April had been to fly 1,191 feet to the west. Though the Ingenuity team has not yet released the actual flight details, I have indicated with the green line on the overview map above the estimated distance and direction planned. The green dot marks Ingenuity’s position before the flight, with the blue dot marking Perseverance’s present location. The red dotted line indicates the planned route for Perseverance.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
Click for interactive map.
For the past two months the science and engineering teams for the Perseverance rover and the Ingenuity helicopter in Jezero Crater have been very silent as to the status of Ingenuity. On April 25, 2023 the Ingenuity team had posted their flight plan for the helicopter’s 52nd flight, with an expected flight date the next day.
Until today, however, no information about the results of that flight had been released. Except for one update in late May describing earlier issues with communications after flight 49, the science and engineering teams maintained radio silence about that 52nd flight in April.
Today’s update finally explained that silence:
The flight took place back on April 26, but mission controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California lost contact with the helicopter as it descended toward the surface for landing.
The Ingenuity team expected the communications dropout because a hill stood between the helicopter’s landing location and the Perseverance rover’s position, blocking communication between the two. The rover acts as a radio relay between the helicopter and mission controllers at JPL. In anticipation of this loss of communications, the Ingenuity team had already developed re-contact plans for when the rover would drive back within range. Contact was re-established June 28 when Perseverance crested the hill and could see Ingenuity again.
The flight plan for the 52nd flight in April had been to fly 1,191 feet to the west. Though the Ingenuity team has not yet released the actual flight details, I have indicated with the green line on the overview map above the estimated distance and direction planned. The green dot marks Ingenuity’s position before the flight, with the blue dot marking Perseverance’s present location. The red dotted line indicates the planned route for Perseverance.
On Christmas Eve 1968 three Americans became the first humans to visit another world. What they did to celebrate was unexpected and profound, and will be remembered throughout all human history. Genesis: the Story of Apollo 8, Robert Zimmerman's classic history of humanity's first journey to another world, tells that story, and it is now available as both an ebook and an audiobook, both with a foreword by Valerie Anders and a new introduction by Robert Zimmerman.
The ebook is available everywhere for $5.99 (before discount) at amazon, or direct from my ebook publisher, ebookit. If you buy it from ebookit you don't support the big tech companies and the author gets a bigger cut much sooner.
The audiobook is also available at all these vendors, and is also free with a 30-day trial membership to Audible.
"Not simply about one mission, [Genesis] is also the history of America's quest for the moon... Zimmerman has done a masterful job of tying disparate events together into a solid account of one of America's greatest human triumphs."--San Antonio Express-News
“Mars Guy” update:
https://youtu.be/fCIqgNWJ4jc
4:09
Does anyone have an explanation for why there was no announcement of the anticipated loss of contact, either before or after it occurred, even as a speculation? The US space program has a tradition of openness that doesn’t seem to have been followed here…or am I missing something?
Ray Van Dune: NASA long ago abandoned its openness policy in many ways. In this case, it followed the Soviet approach, which is to say nothing unless it is possible to put a positive spin on it.
There was no reason for the Ingenuity team to not announce what they knew in April, that the flight was apparently good up until just before landing, when contact was lost because of a hill blocking sightline communications. In fact, this would have been excellent publicity! Think of the questions news reports could have asked: Has Ingenuity landed properly? Did it crash? Is it all right? When will we regain communications and find out?
Instead, they went radio silent until they could say all was well. Very disappointing, counter productive, and indicative of a circle-the-wagons defensive attitude wholly self-defeating.
Bob, I hope I can take your reply as generally supportive of my observation, thank you.
But why the failure to put the easy and reasonable positive spin on it… “Oh, it just landed behind a hill, but since it is autonomous and well-proven, it is almost certainly okay”.
Could it be that someone was embarrassed that they did not predict a potential loss of contact? I hope it was an honest oversight, and not something so childish!
Ray Van Dune: This is very complicate work. If they were surprised by the loss of contact, no one should feel the slightest bit of shame. They are working on the edge of the unknown, pushing that envelope. We all expect surprises, no matter how hard these engineers try to design them out.
If they did feel embarrassed and acted to protect themselves, they should be more embarrassed now.
Belva was my mother’s name. I never understood why her parents burdened her with that name.
It might have been a warning that she wasn’t going to be the nicest person on the planet.
She wasn’t.
Naming her Belva may have contributed to her wanting to make everyone else around her just as miserable. No, it was just her.
Mom, I love you. You were a real bitch..
I’ll go away for a while.
Too much attitude.
Wonder if they ever considered this scenario. Seems like if it lost comms on the way down, it could realize this, rise back up, and try and reestablish contact long enough to receive new instructions.
Or is there no reserve power for such a maneuver?
Andi: Remember, the helicopter is programmed to fly entirely on its own. There is no need for communications during the flight. The loss of comm occurred just before landing because there was no line of sight to Perseverance, and this prevented Ingenuity from transmitting its data from the flight.
It could be that the engineering teams had no idea at all about anything that happened on the flight, until they regained communications and obtained that data. If so, then from April till now they knew nothing about Ingenuity’s status. They should have said so.
Bob, thanks for the info. For some reason I thought that it was transmitting (and receiving) data as it flew.
Andi: I should thank you. Your question made me realize that the Ingenuity team likely had no idea what had happened at all during that April flight, and didn’t find out until now.