The Ingenuity helicopter arrived on Mars in mid-February while attached to the underbelly of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s Perseverance rover. The robotic duo landed on the red planet’s Jezero Crater, a dried-out lakebed, with the intention of searching for evidence of microbial life on the planet, among other objectives.
Ingenuity encountered a “stressful flight” during its sixth attempt at going airborne in the Martian atmosphere after its operating systems appeared to undergo a navigation timing error, NASA recently revealed in a post detailing the latest events of the mission.
Håvard Grip, who serves as NASA’s chief pilot of the chopper, detailed in the update that officials detected a “glitch” once images being sent back to Earth-based researchers were being sent with inaccurate timestamps. Researchers later determined that the technical issue caused the loss of one image.
Video released by the US space agency gives a peek at Ingenuity’s wild ride, showing how the chopper swayed in transit before managing to safely land within 16 feet of the targeted landing location.
The weekend flight attempt marked the first time that Ingenuity experienced a major problem since arriving on the red planet. However, it also proved to be the first time that the chopper attempted to journey some 492 feet while traveling at a ground speed of 9 mph.
A spokesperson for NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory told The Verge that engineers are still reviewing data from the flight attempt, and that it’s unclear exactly when the seventh flight will be scheduled.
Sourse: sputniknews.com
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