We will have to wait a little longer to see the first Mars helicopter take off.
NASA originally intended to conduct her first Red Planet flight Helicopter ingenuity – the very first powered flight on a world outside of Earth – on Sunday (April 11). However, a quick rotor test on Friday (April 9) did not go as planned, push back the debut until Wednesday (April 14) at the earliest.
Now, after analyzing the issue over the weekend, the Ingenuity team has concluded that “ a minor change and reinstallation of Ingenuity’s flight control software is the most robust way forward, ” officials from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) said. in Southern California, that technology demonstration mission, wrote in an update Monday (April 12).
“Our best estimate of a target flight date is fluid at the moment, but we are working towards reaching these milestones and will set a flight date next week,” NASA officials wrote in the update.
Related: Watch NASA’s Mars helicopter Ingenuity test its blades! (video)
Validate the software change and move to the 4-lb. (1.8 kilograms) helicopter, via NASA’s Perseverance, will take time, officials added. A detailed timeline is still being worked out and the team plans to set a new flight date next week.
“We are confident in the team’s ability to meet this challenge and prepare for Ingenuity’s historic first controlled, powered flight on another planet,” officials wrote. Ingenuity remains healthy and stable, and its vital systems like power and communication are functioning properly, they added.
Perseverance and ingenuity landed together in the 28-mile (45-kilometer) Jezero crater on February 18. On April 3, the solar-powered helicopter was deployed from the rover’s belly and began to record the sun of Mars for the first time.
After starting up, Ingenuity started going through a series of preflight checkouts. The helicopter has passed all of these tests, except for the last one – Friday’s spin-up, which aimed to get Ingenuity’s two rotors to 2,400 revolutions per minute, the same rotational speed they will reach in flight.
But during the test, “the sequence of commands controlling the test ended early due to the expiration of a watchdog timer,” NASA officials said. wrote in a statement on Saturday (April 10). “This happened while trying to switch the flight computer from ‘Pre-Flight’ to ‘Flight’ mode.”
Ingenuity carries two cameras, but no scientific instruments. Its main task is to demonstrate that powered flight on Mars is possible, potentially opening a new way of exploration on the Red Planet. If Ingenuity’s month-long flight campaign is successful, future Mars missions can usually contain helicopters as scouts for robbers or as standalone data collectors, NASA officials have said.
Persistence will support Ingenuity’s test campaign – the mission team will have to direct communications to and from the helicopter through the rover – and will also try to capture high-resolution footage of its flights.
As the helicopter team works out Ingenuity’s issues, JPL officials said, Perseverance will continue to study nearby rock targets and prepare for a test of another technology demonstration: the Mars Oxygen In Situ Resource Utilization Experiment (MOXIE), an instrument on the rover designed to extract oxygen from the carbon dioxide-dominated atmosphere of Mars.
Once Ingenuity has ended its flights, Perseverance will be fully focused on its own mission, which has two main goals: to search for evidence of ancient life at the bottom of the Jezero crater, where a lake and river delta occurred long ago, and collect of dozens of monsters for future return to Earth
Mike Wall is the author of “Outside(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the quest for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.