NASA Flew Its Mars Helicopter Again After Saving It From Dangerous Debris
NASA's Mars helicopter is on a roll and continues nailing flights despite all odds. It seems like the small helicopter can take everything Mars throws at it. It just faced a massive regional storm which grounded Perseverance for weeks and almost drained the life of the Mars Insight lander. The helicopter also recently escaped a rough terrain during take-off, survived season change and a previous malfunction.
The Mars Helicopter, Ingenuity, was only a mission to demonstrate that flying on another planet was possible. Initially, NASA only wanted the small flying drone to do five flights. It is well past that and continues breaking record after record. After all, there is not much competition in the helicopters-flying-in-the-Red-Planet category.
Related: NASA's Mars Helicopter Lost Contact With Rover, Could Be In Trouble
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory celebrated a successful flight 19 for Ingenuity. Now the helicopter is safe in the eastern ridge of "South Séítah," always in line of sight of Perseverance. However, JPL says this flight was a reminder of the challenges and unpredictability of the Martian environment. The recent Mars dust storm left the small helicopter with two significant situations that needed to be fixed if the mission was to take flight again.
When the latest storm finally cleared on Mars, Ingenuity discovered that its primary camera, which it uses to navigate, was dusty and blurred. The swashplates of the helicopter were filled with sand, making things even worse. Pilots use swashplates to adjust the blades of a helicopter. These are flight critical. NASA engineers got busy and creative to find a solution and bring mission 19 home.
Ingenuity's primary camera provides the navigation software with the
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