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Ingenuity’s flight schedule

Ingenuity’s first flight on Mars is now a go for late on April 11th, with the first data arriving in the early hours of April 12th.

The flight plan should that first flight go as expected is as follows:

The helicopter team has 30 Martian sols (roughly 31 days on Earth) to take the first tentative flights. Assuming Ingenuity survives the first flight, it will rest and transmit data before attempting a second flight with lateral movement. Subsequent flights will happen every three or four Martian sols. The fifth flight — if Ingenuity gets that far — will be a chance to really soar. “The probability is it would be unlikely it will land safely because we will go into unsurveyed areas,” Aung said.

They have unlocked and tested the rotary blades, with all working as planned.

To watch JPL will have a live stream which I will embed on Behind the Black when it goes live at about 3:30 am Eastern on the morning of April 12th.

Genesis cover

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.


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"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

3 comments

  • mkent

    Ingenuity’s first flight on Mars is now a go for late on April 11th, with the first data arriving in the early hours of April 12th.

    Nope. No earlier than April 14th.

  • mkent: I thank you for noting this, but I must add that you have a very impolite way of doing so, and you have done this repeatedly in other posts..

    The press release went out less than an hour ago. Yet your comment does not note this, but instead is written to imply that my post was incorrect, from the beginning.

    A more courteous and polite way to note the schedule change would have been to also note that the change has just been announced.

    Just sayin’.

  • David M. Cook

    It‘s interesting to note that every single person I talk to about the “Mars Rover” (as if it‘s the first one!) wants to know when the helicopter will fly. I remind them that it‘s a small part of a large scientific mission, but most don‘t care. The‘re just jazzed about the chopper!

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