Last Friday, I posted a little addendum to another post about the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars having had its 53rd flight, with the 54th planned.
It turns out that the 53rd didn't go as planned, but proved an important part of the helicopter's design. The flight was aborted, executing a part of the software that has been there since the start but never yet executed in a flight. Which is to say it was unverified in real world use, on Mars.
Despite its brevity, however, Ingenuity's most recent flight on August 3 was nonetheless an important one for the helicopter. That's because, on its 53rd flight in late July, the helicopter automatically aborted a planned flight of 136 seconds after just 76 seconds and made an emergency landing.
After the flight, the helicopter's operators at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory determined that the premature landing came after images from Ingenuity's navigation camera did not match data from the vehicle's inertial measurement unit. In short, its on-board computer expected to see one thing, and it saw another.
"Since the very first flight, we have included a program called ‘LAND_NOW’ that was designed to put the helicopter on the surface as soon as possible if any one of a few dozen off-nominal scenarios was encountered," Teddy Tzanetos, team lead emeritus for Ingenuity, said. "During Flight 53, we encountered one of these, and the helicopter worked as planned and executed an immediate landing."
Mission 54 was intended to gather additional data about the conditions that prompted 53 to end early. The JPL team feels comfortable looking at the views from flight 54 that they understand what prompted the ‘LAND_NOW’ response and feels confident that Ingenuity can get back to flying more rigorous missions soon.
This image of NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover, visible along the top edge, a bit right of center, was taken by the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter during its 54th flight on Aug. 3, 2023. At this point, Ingenuity was around 15 feet (officially '5 meters') above the planet. Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech
One wonders what it saw that drove the "LAND NOW".
ReplyDeleteMarvin??
DeleteFrom the one linked article to JPL:
The Ingenuity team is confident that the early landing was triggered when image frames from the helicopter’s navigation camera didn’t sync up as expected with data from the rotorcraft’s inertial measurement unit. The unit measures Ingenuity’s acceleration and rotational rates – data that makes it possible to estimate where the helicopter is, how fast it is moving, and how it is oriented in space. This was not the first occasion on which image frames were dropped by the helicopter’s Navcam during a flight. Back on May 22, 2021, multiple image frames were dropped, resulting in excessive pitching and rolling near the end of Flight 6.
After Flight 6, the team updated the flight software to help mitigate the impact of dropped images, and the fix worked well for the subsequent 46 flights. However, on Flight 53 the quantity of dropped navigation images exceeded what the software patch allows.
As a Computer guy, having written some RTOS and worked with imaging software, it flat amazes me that they can pack this kind of computing power in a helicopter on MARS, for Pete's sake!
ReplyDeleteGot some mighty smart and clever people at JPL, NASA, and other places.
Now, let's put the Mark I human brain and Mark I eyeballs there.
When a human receives contradictory input, they get sick, even vomit. Even if not that, they usually reel and wobble out of control ending in hugging the ground in miserable condition.
DeleteIt seems a robot chopper did better.
The entire Ingenuity effort is a Phenomenal feat of engineering. It should make every engineer proud. Just spectacular achievement in every way. Bravo!
ReplyDeleteI am glad the altitude was included. The photo shows what looks like formations of Barchan dunes. The altitude allows indirect estinate if grain size of the dunes.
ReplyDeleteShould you drop back, is that the name for those darker formations that look like they're pointed toward the lower right of the picture - Barchan dunes? I noticed the way they all appear aligned and that the overall shape looked like a sharp edge along the middle of their long axis.
DeleteSiG, yes I think you have it.
DeleteThere is a fine example just to the left of the center kof the photo. They are greyish 'barbs' on a field of Martian red. Pointing NW to SE.
The 'sharp edge' is the ridge of the dune. The dune is made up of unconsolidated loose grains. See also, Angle of Repose.
DeleteThanks. Because of the color difference, I thought of those as rocks, maybe eroded by windblown sand over the years.
DeleteAngle of repose: I think of it the opposite way, down not up, because there are critters here that live underground at the bottom of a funnel shaped by the angle. They prey on whatever slides down that funnel.
I'm thinking grains nearly as fine as flour dust. I could be wrong about that fineness, yet I think that because I've read that one feature of Mars is the powerful strong winds. Aeloian polishing.
DeleteSome browsing showed particle size in the Martian dunes is as fine as 5 microns. Wheat flour dust is as fine as 10 microns.
DeleteAlso, in previous comment I failed to mention lower baric pressure in Martian atmosphere. Atmospheric pressure has direct effect on particle size, whether terrestial or on Mars.