The Mars helicopter Ingenuity confronted a problem this week when it misplaced communications with its rover associate Perseverance, marking the primary time in its a couple of 12 months of operations that it had missed a communications check-in. Luckily for the plucky little helicopter, communications have now been re-established. Nonetheless, it faces an uphill battle with the encroaching Martian mud.
The drop in communications, which occurred on Tuesday, Might 3, was resulting from troublesome mud within the Martian ambiance, in keeping with an update shared by NASA. With altering seasons on Mars, the quantity of mud within the ambiance is rising. And this mud can cowl up photo voltaic panels, like those on Ingenuity, rendering them much less efficient.
As a result of dusty photo voltaic panels, it’s more durable for Ingenuity to cost its batteries — an issue the helicopter has confronted earlier than when a mud storm handed over the Jezero crater the place it’s exploring, and it needed to shake the mud off earlier than it may proceed operations. On this event, the mud prevented the batteries from charging to such a level that a part of the helicopter’s management system, the field-programmable gate array (FPGA), switched off.
“When the battery pack’s state of cost dropped beneath a decrease restrict, the helicopter’s field-programmable gate array (FPGA) was powered down,” defined NASA’s David Agle within the update. “The FPGA manages Ingenuity’s operational state, switching the opposite avionics parts on and off as wanted to maximise energy conservation. It additionally operates the warmers that allow the helicopter to outlive frigid Martian nights, maintains exact spacecraft time, and controls when the helicopter is scheduled to get up for communications classes with Perseverance.”
The helicopter is designed to show elements on and off throughout the day and night time cycle as they’re required. However when the FPGA switched off unexpectedly, it reset Ingenuity’s onboard clock. Then, when the solar rose and daylight began recharging its batteries once more, the helicopter’s time was out of sync with the rover. That meant Ingenuity’s makes an attempt to contact Perseverance have been on the flawed time, therefore why it missed the check-in.
Perseverance saved listening for Ingenuity’s check-in sign, and it arrived on Might 5 at 11:45 a.m. native Mars time. Ingenuity was in a position to set up a radio hyperlink and convey that it was steady, on the proper temperature, and its battery was recharging and was as much as 41% of capability.
That’s all excellent news, however there’s an ongoing difficulty attributable to the mud. It should proceed to be exhausting for the helicopter to cost its batteries sufficient to get by means of the chilly Martian nights. This difficulty isn’t a shock, as Ingenuity was initially solely designed for 5 flights however has made an incredible 24 flights thus far. With that elevated mission size, the group knew that seasonal adjustments to the climate would create higher challenges.
“We’ve got all the time recognized that Martian winter and mud storm season would current new challenges for Ingenuity, particularly colder sols, a rise in atmospheric mud, and extra frequent mud storms,” mentioned Ingenuity Staff Lead Teddy Tzanetos of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “Each flight and each mile of distance flown past our authentic 30-sol mission has pushed the spacecraft to its limits every sol on Mars.”
To attempt to hold Ingenuity going for so long as doable, the group has despatched new instructions to the helicopter to decrease the temperature at which it turns its heaters on. This protects on battery utilization as the warmers eat numerous energy, nevertheless it does depart the helicopter’s {hardware} uncovered to chilly temperatures, which is dangerous. Nonetheless, if the {hardware} can survive a number of nights like this, the battery is perhaps recharged sufficient that the helicopter can fly as soon as once more.
“Our high precedence is to keep up communications with Ingenuity within the subsequent few sols, however even then, we all know that there can be vital challenges forward,” mentioned Tzanetos. “I couldn’t be prouder of our group’s efficiency over the past 12 months, not to mention our plane’s unbelievable achievements on Mars. We’re hopeful that we are able to accumulate battery cost to be able to return to nominal operations and proceed our mission into the weeks forward.”
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