Ingenuity unfolded and ready for placement on ground
Click for full image.
The photo to the right, taken yesterday, shows Perseverance’s Ingenuity helicopter now vertical with its legs deployed, hanging from the bottom of the rover and ready for placement on the ground.
The next step will be drop Ingenuity those last few inches. Once released Perseverance will quickly drive away, as it will no longer be providing power to the helicopter and will instead be blocking its solar panels from sunlight.
Perseverance will then proceed to its lookout post while engineers check out Ingenuity to make sure all is working.
The targeted flight date remains April 8th.
UPDATE: JPL just announced that it is delaying Ingenuity’s flight to April 11th. The announcement was done by a tweet, so provided no explanation as to why JPL decided to delay three days.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
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Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
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Click for full image.
The photo to the right, taken yesterday, shows Perseverance’s Ingenuity helicopter now vertical with its legs deployed, hanging from the bottom of the rover and ready for placement on the ground.
The next step will be drop Ingenuity those last few inches. Once released Perseverance will quickly drive away, as it will no longer be providing power to the helicopter and will instead be blocking its solar panels from sunlight.
Perseverance will then proceed to its lookout post while engineers check out Ingenuity to make sure all is working.
The targeted flight date remains April 8th.
UPDATE: JPL just announced that it is delaying Ingenuity’s flight to April 11th. The announcement was done by a tweet, so provided no explanation as to why JPL decided to delay three days.
The support of my readers through the years has given me the freedom and ability to analyze objectively the ongoing renaissance in space, as well as the cultural changes -- for good or ill -- that are happening across America. Four years ago, just before the 2020 election I wrote that Joe Biden's mental health was suspect. Only in this year has the propaganda mainstream media decided to recognize that basic fact.
Fourteen years ago I wrote that SLS and Orion were a bad ideas, a waste of money, would be years behind schedule, and better replaced by commercial private enterprise. Even today NASA and Congress refuse to recognize this reality.
In 2020 when the world panicked over COVID I wrote that the panic was unnecessary, that the virus was apparently simply a variation of the flu, that masks were not simply pointless but if worn incorrectly were a health threat, that the lockdowns were a disaster and did nothing to stop the spread of COVID. Only in the past year have some of our so-called experts in the health field have begun to recognize these facts.
Your help allows me to do this kind of intelligent analysis. I take no advertising or sponsors, so my reporting isn't influenced by donations by established space or drug companies. Instead, I rely entirely on donations and subscriptions from my readers, which gives me the freedom to write what I think, unencumbered by outside influences.
Please consider supporting my work here at Behind the Black.
You can support me either by giving a one-time contribution or a regular subscription. There are five ways of doing so:
1. Zelle: This is the only internet method that charges no fees. All you have to do is use the Zelle link at your internet bank and give my name and email address (zimmerman at nasw dot org). What you donate is what I get.
2. Patreon: Go to my website there and pick one of five monthly subscription amounts, or by making a one-time donation.
3. A Paypal Donation:
5. Donate by check, payable to Robert Zimmerman and mailed to
Behind The Black
c/o Robert Zimmerman
P.O.Box 1262
Cortaro, AZ 85652
You can also support me by buying one of my books, as noted in the boxes interspersed throughout the webpage or shown in the menu above. And if you buy the books through the ebookit links, I get a larger cut and I get it sooner.
This is exciting. I know they want to go through a lot of checkouts but this is a long time to get a drone up and running. Let’s see some flight. On Mars!
The targeted flight date remains April 8th.
Nope. April 11th.
Do any of Perseverance’s cameras have the capability to take video, or can they only do still shots only?
Richard M: I have been trying to get this question answered for myself. From what I can tell, none of the camera shoot video, but I think it likely that they will set one camera to take many repeated images to create a movie, much as was done during the landing.
I hope that if there is no proper video, there will at least be a high-speed data link, so that if something goes wrong aerodynamically they will be able to understand it.
I do have a nagging concern that even with the efforts at simulation in a vacuum chamber on Earth, something could go wrong, especially given the super-high blade speeds needed to generate lift on Mars!
We all must recognize that this flight test is exactly comparable to what SpaceX is doing with Starship, and carries the same risks.
Robert Zimmerman noted: “. . . and carries the same risks.”
Well, at least the crater will be in the right place.
Looking at the image: mental picture of a Jawa Landcruiser releasing a droid.
But ‘This is real, and that’s a movie’.
Does Ingenuity have the ability to right itself if it tips onto its side?
How does Perserverance communicate to Earth. Directly from Perseverance to Earth – to an orbiter and then to Earth?
Does Ingenuity have the ability to right itself if it tips onto its side?
From what I’ve read, not, it does not. The designers instead tried to minimize the probability through a wide leg base, low center of gravity and flight control software. I suppose it is theoretically possible that Perseverance, aka Percy could be driven over to use its robotic arm to nudge it right side up, but it is not clear whether mission managers would consider doing so worth the time and risks… It’s just a technology demonstrator, after all. (You can bet JPL has burned a lot of brain cells and electrons on the possibility over the last few years.)
How does Perserverance communicate to Earth. Directly from Perseverance to Earth – to an orbiter and then to Earth?
It has the ability to do so either way via its UHF and two X-Band antennas, but the preference is to do it through one of the orbiters – Percy can transmit far more data that way, because the orbiters have much more powerful transmitters. But obviously JPL and NASA always wanted Percy to have the ability to communicate directly, since the orbiters might all fail (actually, likely *will* fail) before Percy’s mission ends in the late 2030’s.
Picking up what Richard M is putting down: I like ‘Percy’ for the rover. Although, as the name is ‘Perseverance’, it seems a more feminine name (Faith, Hope, Charity, et al). And by Western tradition, anything complicated is considered female.
Occurs to me that naming a vehicle prior to the demonstration is tempting fate, a bit. Recall Shackleton’s ‘Endurance’, which didn’t.