In the light of its successes early this month, the Ingenuity helicopter will have its mission extended, NASA and Jet Propulsion Laboratory mission planners announced during a press briefing this morning.
Ingenuity was originally intended to have been retired after the completion of its five scheduled flights, all of which were to occur within a planned 30-sol window. However, the craft has so exceeded its expectations the planners have elected to continue to fly Ingenuity for a further 30 sols, meaning the craft’s working life should come to an end in early June.
Flight four, which was postponed yesterday due to a software error, is now scheduled to occur later today. It will entail a 266m round trip, after which scientists will spend several days processing images returned from Ingenuity in order to construct a 3-D map of its surroundings; the map will be then be used to design a flight path for the subsequent flight, which would then occur in the first week of May.
Among the points of interest discussed during the briefing was the fact that Perseverance would attempt to record the sound of Ingenuity flying using its microphones.
Ingenuity’s fate after the end of today’s announced mission extension is unclear. ‘We’re in a kind of “see how it goes” phase,’ said Lori Glaze, director of NASA’s Planetary Science Division at NASA Headquarters. ‘We’re going to watch [Ingenuity’s] performance; we’re going to see the kind of data products we can get back… after that 30-sol period, we’ll assess where we are…. There is a potential to go beyond [the mission extension].’ Principal Member of Technical Staff Bob Balaram pointed out that in embarking on its mission extension, the rotorcraft was exceeding its design limits.
However, in response to a question regarding pushing the flight ceiling, Balaram added that Ingenuity’s current flying height of five metres was ‘a good place to be’, as it was the optimal height for imaging and mapping the ground.
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