NASA has extended flight operations of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter through September. In the months ahead, history’s first aircraft to operate from the surface of another world will support the Perseverance rover’s upcoming science campaign exploring the ancient river delta of Jezero Crater. Along the way, it will continue testing its own capabilities to support the design of future Mars air vehicles.

The announcement comes on the heels of the rotorcraft’s 21st successful flight, the first of at least three needed for the helicopter to cross the northwest portion of a region known as “Séítah” and reach its next staging area.

“Less than a year ago we didn’t even know if powered, controlled flight of an aircraft at Mars was possible,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, the associate administrator of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. “Now, we are looking forward to Ingenuity’s involvement in Perseverance’s second science campaign. Such a transformation of mindset in such a short period is simply amazing, and one of the most historic in the annals of air and space exploration.”

Ingenuity’s new area of operations is entirely different from the modest, relatively flat terrain it has been flying over since its first flight last April. Several miles wide and formed by an ancient river, the fan-shaped delta rises more than 130 feet (40 meters) above the crater floor. Filled with jagged cliffs, angled surfaces, projecting boulders, and sand-filled pockets that could stop a rover in its tracks (or upend a helicopter upon landing), the delta promises to hold numerous geologic revelations – perhaps even the proof necessary to determine that microscopic life once existed on Mars billions of years ago.

Upon reaching the delta, Ingenuity’s first orders will be to help determine which of two dry river channels Perseverance should take when it’s time to climb to the top of the delta. Along with routing assistance, data provided by the helicopter will help the Perseverance team assess potential science targets. Ingenuity may even be called upon to image geologic features too far afield (or outside of the rover’s traversable zone), or perhaps scout landing zones and caching sites for the Mars Sample Return program.

“The Jezero river delta campaign will be the biggest challenge the Ingenuity team faces since first flight at Mars,” said Teddy Tzanetos, Ingenuity team lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “To enhance our chances of success, we have increased the size of our team and are making upgrades to our flight software geared toward improving operational flexibility and flight safety.”

Higher Flights

Several of these upgrades have led to reduced navigation errors during flight, which increases both flight and landing safety. A recent software change already on the rotorcraft frees Ingenuity from its previously programmed maximum altitude of 50 feet (15 meters). The altitude gains could result in incremental increases in both air speed and range. A second upgrade allows Ingenuity to change airspeed as it flies. Another enables it to better understand and adjust to changes in terrain texture during flight. Future software upgrades may include adding terrain elevation maps into the navigation filter and a landing-hazard-avoidance capability.

Before aerial reconnaissance of the delta can begin, Ingenuity has to complete its journey to the area. Scheduled for no earlier than March 19, Ingenuity’s next flight will be a complex journey, about 1,150 feet (350 meters) in length, that includes a sharp bend in its course to avoid a large hill. After that, the team will determine whether two or three more flights will be required to complete the crossing of northwest Séítah.

The first experimental flight on another world took place on April 19, 2021, and lasted 39.1 seconds. After another four flights, six more minutes in the air, and traveling a total distance of 1,637 feet (499 meters), NASA transitioned Ingenuity into an operations demonstration phase, testing its ability to provide an aerial dimension to the Perseverance mission. With the completion of Flight 21, the rotorcraft has logged over 38 minutes aloft and traveled 2.9 miles (4.64 kilometers). As Ingenuity pushes farther into uncharted territory, these numbers will inevitably go up, and previous flight records will more than likely fall.

“This upcoming flight will be my 22nd entry in our logbook,” said Ingenuity chief pilot Håvard Grip of JPL. “I remember thinking when this all started, we’d be lucky to have three entries and immensely fortunate to get five. Now, at the rate we’re going, I’m going to need a second book.”

More About Ingenuity

The Ingenuity Mars Helicopter was built by JPL, which also manages this technology demonstration project for NASA Headquarters. It is supported by NASA’s Science Mission Directorate. NASA’s Ames Research Center in California’s Silicon Valley and NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, provided significant flight performance analysis and technical assistance during Ingenuity’s development. AeroVironment Inc., Qualcomm, and SolAero also provided design assistance and major vehicle components. Lockheed Space designed and manufactured the Mars Helicopter Delivery System.

At NASA Headquarters, Dave Lavery is the program executive for the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter.

More About Perseverance

A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust).

Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.

The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemis missions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.

JPL, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.

Quelle: NASA

----

Update: 20.03.2022

.

NASA's Perseverance rover hightails it to Martian Delta

NASA's Perseverance Mars rover looks back at its wheel tracks on March 17, 2022, the 381th Martian day, or sol, of the mission.

The rover's self-driving capabilities will be put to the test this month as it begins a record-breaking series of sprints to its next sampling location.

NASA's Perseverance Mars rover is trying to cover more distance in a single month than any rover before it - and it's doing so using artificial intelligence. On the path ahead are sandpits, craters, and fields of sharp rocks that the rover will have to navigate around on its own. At the end of the 3-mile (5-kilometer) journey, which began March 14, 2022, Perseverance will reach an ancient river delta within Jezero Crater, where a lake existed billions of years ago.

This delta is one of the best locations on Mars for the rover to look for signs of past microscopic life. Using a drill on the end of its robotic arm and a complex sample collection system in its belly, Perseverance is collecting rock cores for return to Earth - the first part of the Mars Sample Return campaign.

"The delta is so important that we've actually decided to minimize science activities and focus on driving to get there more quickly," said Ken Farley of Caltech, Perseverance's project scientist. "We'll be taking lots of images of the delta during that drive. The closer we get, the more impressive those images will be."

The science team will be searching these images for the rocks they'll eventually want to study in closer detail using the instruments on Perseverance's arm. They'll also hunt for the best routes the rover can take to ascend the 130-foot-high (40-meter-high) delta.

But first, Perseverance needs to get there. The rover will do this by relying on its self-driving AutoNav system, which has already set impressive distance records. While all of NASA's Mars rovers have had self-driving abilities, Perseverance has the most advanced one yet.

"Self-driving processes that took minutes on a rover like Opportunity happen in less than a second on Perseverance," said veteran rover planner and flight software developer Mark Maimone of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which leads the mission. "Because autonomous driving is now faster, we can cover more ground than if humans programmed every drive."

How Rover Planning Works
Before the rover rolls, a team of mobility planning experts (Perseverance has 14 who trade off shifts) writes the driving commands the robotic explorer will carry out. The commands reach Mars via NASA's Deep Space Network, and Perseverance sends back data so the planners can confirm the rover's progress. Multiple days are required to complete some plans, as with a recent drive that spanned about 1,673 feet (510 meters) and included thousands of individual rover commands.

Some drives require more human input than others. AutoNav is useful for drives over flat terrain with simple potential hazards - for instance, large rocks and slopes - that are easy for the rover to detect and work around.

Thinking While Driving
AutoNav reflects an evolution of self-driving tools previously developed for NASA's Spirit, Opportunity, and Curiosity rovers. What's different for AutoNav is "thinking while driving" - allowing Perseverance to take and process images while on the move. The rover then navigates based on those images. Is that boulder too close? Will its belly be able to clear that rock? What if the rover wheels were to slip?

Upgraded hardware allows "thinking while driving" to happen. Faster cameras mean Perseverance can take images quickly enough to process its route in real-time. And unlike its predecessors, Perseverance has an additional computer dedicated entirely to image processing. The computer relies on a single-purpose, super-efficient microchip called a field-programmable gate array that is great for computer vision processing.

"On past rovers, autonomy meant slowing down because data had to be processed on a single computer," Maimone said. "This extra computer is insanely fast compared to what we had in the past, and having it dedicated for driving means you don't have to share computing resources with over 100 other tasks."

Of course, humans aren't completely out of the picture during AutoNav drives. They still plan the basic route using images taken from space by missions like NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. Then, they mark obstacles such as potential sand traps for Perseverance to avoid, drawing "keep out" and "keep in" zones that help it navigate.

Another big difference is Perseverance's sense of space.

Curiosity's autonomous navigation program keeps the rover in a safety bubble that is 16 feet (5 meters) wide. If Curiosity spots two rocks that are, say, 15 feet (4.5 meters) apart - a gap it could easily navigate - it will still stop or travel around them rather than risk passing through.

But Perseverance's bubble is much smaller: A virtual box is centered on each of the rover's six wheels. Mars' newest rover has a more sensitive understanding of the terrain and can get around boulders on its own.

"When we first looked at Jezero Crater as a landing site, we were concerned about the dense fields of rocks we saw scattered across the crater floor," Maimone said. "Now we're able to skirt or even straddle rocks that we couldn't have approached before."

While previous rover missions took a slower pace exploring along their path, AutoNav provides the science team with the ability to zip to the locations they prioritize the most. That means the mission is more focused on its primary objective: finding the samples that scientists will eventually want to return to Earth.

Quelle: SD

----

Update: 24.03.2022

.

Mars helicopter Ingenuity soars on 22nd Red Planet flight

Ingenuity and NASA's Perseverance rover are headed toward an ancient Martian river delta.

NASA's Ingenuity Mars helicopter captured this shot of its own shadow during its 22nd Red Planet flight, on March 20, 2022. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity has done it again, soaring successfully on its 22nd Red Planet flight. 

The 4-pound (1.8 kilograms) Ingenuity stayed aloft for 101.4 seconds and reached a maximum altitude of 33 feet (10 meters) during the sortie, which took place on Sunday (March 20), according to a Monday (March 21) tweet by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, which manages Ingenuity's mission. 

Ingenuity and NASA's Perseverance rover landed together inside Mars' Jezero Crater in February 2021. Jezero hosted a lake and a river delta billions of years ago, making it a great spot for the life-hunting, sample-caching Perseverance to explore, NASA officials have said.

The little chopper quickly aced its five-flight original mission, which was designed to show that aerial exploration is possible on Mars. After this success, NASA granted Ingenuity a mission extension, during which the rotorcraft has been serving as a scout for Perseverance.  

The rover's handlers are currently steering Perseverance toward an accessible part of the ancient delta, and Ingenuity's observations are helping them pick the best route, mission team members have said.

During its first 21 flights, Ingenuity flew a total of 15,247 feet (4,647 m) and stayed in the air for nearly 39 minutes, according to a flight log maintained by the mission team.  

Those numbers should continue to grow beyond the additions provided by Sunday's flight; Ingenuity is in good health, JPL officials have said, and NASA recently extended the helicopter's operations again, through at least this September.

Quelle: SC

----

Update: 3.04.2022

.

What Sounds Captured by NASA’s Perseverance Rover Reveal About Mars

The ensemble of sounds in this video captured on Mars by NASA’s Perseverance rover includes a dust removal tool for rock analysis, the Ingenuity Mars helicopter, and the impact of a laser on rocks. A new study of some of those sounds, captured mostly by the rover’s SuperCam microphone during the first 216 Martian days of the mission, reveals how sound differs on Mars, including traveling slower than on Earth.

Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

 

A new study based on recordings made by the rover finds that the speed of sound is slower on the Red Planet than on Earth and that, mostly, a deep silence prevails.

 

Listen closely to sounds from Mars, recorded by NASA’s Perseverance: the rover’s mechanical whine and click in a light Martian wind; the whir of rotors on Ingenuity, the Mars helicopter; the crackling strike of a rock-zapping laser.

 

An international team of scientists has done just that, performing the first analysis of acoustics on the Red Planet. Their new study reveals how fast sound travels through the extremely thin, mostly carbon dioxide atmosphere, how Mars might sound to human ears, and how scientists can use audio recordings to probe subtle air-pressure changes on another world – and to gauge the health of the rover.

 

“It’s a new sense of investigation we’ve never used before on Mars,” said Sylvestre Maurice, an astrophysicist at the University of Toulouse in France and lead author of the study. “I expect many discoveries to come, using the atmosphere as a source of sound and the medium of propagation.”

 

Most of the sounds in the study, published April 1 in the journal Nature, were recorded using the microphone on Perseverance’s SuperCam, mounted on the head of the rover’s mast. The study also refers to sounds recorded by another microphone mounted on the chassis of the rover. This second microphone recently recorded the puffs and pings of the rover’s Gaseous Dust Removal Tool, or gDRT, which blows shavings off rocks that the rover has scraped in order to examine.

 

The result of the recordings: a new understanding of strange characteristics of the Martian atmosphere, where the speed of sound is slower than on Earth – and varies with pitch (or frequency). On Earth, sounds typically travel at 767 mph (343 meters per second). But on Mars, low-pitched sounds travel at about 537 mph (240 meters per second), while higher-pitched sounds move at 559 mph (250 meters per second).

 

The variable sound speeds on the Red Planet are an effect of the thin, cold, carbon dioxide atmosphere. Prior to the mission, scientists expected Mars’ atmosphere would influence sound speed, but the phenomenon had never been observed until these recordings were made. Another effect of this thin atmosphere: Sounds carry only a short distance, and higher-pitched tones carry hardly at all. On Earth, sound might drop off after about 213 feet (65 meters); on Mars, it falters at just 26 feet (8 meters), with high-pitched sounds being lost completely at that distance.

 

The recordings from SuperCam’s microphone also reveal previously unobserved pressure variations produced by turbulence in the Martian atmosphere as its energy changes at tiny scales. Martian wind gusts at very short timescales also were measured for the first time.

 

Hear What Familiar Earth Sounds Would Be Like on Mars

 

One of the most striking features of the sound recordings, Maurice said, is the silence that seems to prevail on Mars. “At some point, we thought the microphone was broken, it was so quiet,” he added.

 

That, too, is a consequence of Mars having such a thin atmosphere.

 

“Mars is very quiet because of low atmospheric pressure,” said Baptiste Chide of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico, also a coauthor of the study. “But the pressure changes with the seasons on Mars.”

 

That means, in the Martian autumn months to come, Mars might get noisier – and provide even more insights into its otherworldly air and weather.

 

“We are entering a high-pressure season,” Chide said. “Maybe the acoustic environment on Mars will be less quiet than it was when we landed.”

This illustration indicates the placement of Perseverance’s two microphones. The microphone on the mast is part of the SuperCam science instrument. The microphone on the side of the rover was intended to capture the sounds of entry, descent, and landing for public engagement.

Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

 

 

Sounds of the Mission

 

The acoustic team also studied what the SuperCam microphone picked up from the spinning double rotors of Ingenuity, the Mars helicopter that is the rover’s traveling companion and aerial scout. Spinning at 2,500 revolutions per minute, the rotors produce “a distinctive, low-pitched sound at 84 hertz,” Maurice said, referring to the standard acoustic measure of vibrations per second and the rotation rate for both rotors.

 

On the other hand, when SuperCam’s laser, which vaporizes bits of rock from a distance to study their composition, strikes a target, it makes sparks that create a high-pitched noise above 2 kilohertz.

 

Studying sounds recorded by the rover’s microphones not only reveals details of the Martian atmosphere, but also helps scientists and engineers assess the health and operation of the rover’s many systems, just as one might notice a troubling noise when driving a car.

 

Meanwhile, the key instrument in the study, SuperCam’s microphone, continues to exceed expectations.

 

“The microphone is now used several times a day and performs extremely well; its overall performance is better than what we had modeled and even tested in a Mars-like environment on Earth,” says David Mimoun, professor at Institut Supérieur de l’Aéronautique et de l’Espace (ISAE-SUPAERO) and lead of the team that developed the microphone experiment. “We could even record the humming of the Mars helicopter at long distance.”

 

More About the Mission

 

A key objective for Perseverance’s mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet’s geology and past climate, pave the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith (broken rock and dust).

 

Subsequent NASA missions, in cooperation with ESA (European Space Agency), would send spacecraft to Mars to collect these sealed samples from the surface and return them to Earth for in-depth analysis.

 

The Mars 2020 Perseverance mission is part of NASA’s Moon to Mars exploration approach, which includes Artemismissions to the Moon that will help prepare for human exploration of the Red Planet.

 

Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is managed for NASA by Caltech in Pasadena, California, built and manages operations of the Perseverance rover.

Quelle: NASA

----

Update: 17.04.2022

.

Mars helicopter Ingenuity aces record-breaking 25th flight

Ingenuity just set new personal bests for speed and distance.

NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity captured this photo of its shadow during its 25th Red Planet flight, on April 8, 2022. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity just flew farther and faster than it ever has before.

The 4-pound (1.8 kilograms) Ingenuity aced its 25th flight on the Red Planet last Friday (April 8), setting new personal bests for speed and distance. 

"#MarsHelicopter is breaking records again! Ingenuity completed its 25th and most ambitious flight. It broke its distance and ground speed records, traveling 704 meters [2,310 feet] at 5.5 meters per second while flying for 161.3 seconds," NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, which manages Ingenuity's mission, tweeted on Tuesday (April 12).

According to Ingenuity's flight log, the greatest distance covered by the helicopter had been 2,051 feet (625 meters), achieved during a flight in July 2021. Its previous speed record was 5 meters per second, which it reached on multiple flights. (5 meters per second is about 11.2 mph, or 18 kph. 5.5 meters per second is roughly 12.3 mph, or 19.8 kph).

Friday's sortie didn't set a duration record, however; that mark is 169.5 seconds, set during an August 2021 flight. 

Ingenuity landed on the floor of Mars' Jezero Crater in February 2021 with NASA's life-hunting, sample-caching Perseverance rover. The little chopper deployed from the rover's belly that April and embarked upon a five-flight, one-month mission designed to show that aerial exploration is possible on Mars despite the planet's thin atmosphere.

Ingenuity quickly left that initial campaign in the dust. It's now flying on an extended mission, pushing the boundaries of Martian flight and performing reconnaissance for Perseverance, which is making its way to an accessible remnant of the ancient river delta that once existed within Jezero. 

Friday's flight was the second in five days for Ingenuity and its fifth sortie in the last month. Such activity isn't surprising; Perseverance has been making serious tracks on its drive to the delta, and Ingenuity needs to keep up.

In fact, the mission team wants the helicopter to get to the delta first.

"This is for two reasons: telecommunications and safety," Ben Morrell, Ingenuity operations engineer at JPL, wrote in a blog post on April 5. 

"Ingenuity only communicates with the helicopter base station on Perseverance, so it needs to stay close enough to have a good connection," he added. "For safety, it is ideal if Ingenuity flies ahead of Perseverance to avoid ever having to fly past or near the rover, to minimize the risk of any close contact in a worst-case scenario."

Quelle: SC