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#101 2021-04-30 20:50:58

SpaceNut
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Re: Ingenuity, Scouting Mars by Helicopter

I found the answer on communications and for how long the unit might be able to last.

NASA’s little Mars helicopter has gotten a reprieve.

The rover will continue to relay data and pictures from the helicopter, but stop taking its own chopper shots. The two spacecraft must be within a half-mile (1 kilometer) of one another, for communication relay.

Designed to operate on Mars for 30 days, Ingenuity probably can survive the freezing Martian nights — and repeated flights in the extremely thin atmosphere — for at least another few months.

“We really do expect some finite life," Aung said, “and so it will be a race between how long these parts surprise us in surviving."

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#102 2021-05-01 18:59:51

SpaceNut
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Re: Ingenuity, Scouting Mars by Helicopter

Mars Ingenuity helicopter given new scouting mission

The next phase extends the rotocraft's mission beyond the original month-long technology demonstration. Now, the goal is to assess how well flyers can help future exploration of Mars and other worlds.

"We're going to gather information on the operational support capability of the helicopter while Perseverance focuses on its science mission," Lori Glaze, director of NASA's Planetary Science Division, told reporters Friday.

The type of reconnaissance that Ingenuity performs could one day also prove useful to human missions, by scoping out the best paths for explorers to traverse, and reaching locations that aren't otherwise possible.

why only 30 days more has to do with design and capability.

Chief engineer Bob Balaram predicted a limiting factor will be its ability to withstand the frigid Mars nights, where temperatures plunge to -130 degrees Fahrenheit (-90 degrees Celsius).

Ingenuity keeps warm with a solar-powered heater, but it was only designed to last for a month and engineers aren't sure "how many freeze and thaw cycles (it) can go through before something breaks," he said.

wondering if the rover can place the helicopter back into the warm environment of where it was while being brought to mars....or on top of it so that it can be warmed until spring....

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#103 2021-05-04 20:36:07

SpaceNut
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Re: Ingenuity, Scouting Mars by Helicopter

Its fourth flight will be designed to show that a similar aircraft could potentially be used to map out regions of the surface and provide detailed observations over a wide area.

The “operations” phase of the demonstration will hopefully show that Ingenuity and other aircraft built using the same technology could be used to boost the speed at which new discoveries are made on Mars. The idea is to use Ingenuity in a way that future missions might use dedicated aerial science aircraft, and it’s pretty exciting stuff.


The big thing is the helicopter covers more ground faster than the rover does...but with the aid of the mapping which can be done the course for the rover to travel can be made faster....

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-ing … tion-phase

Flight four will send the rotorcraft about 436 feet (133 meters) south to collect aerial imagery of a potential new landing zone before returning to land at Wright Brothers Field, the name for the Martian airfield on which Ingenuity’s first flight took place.

This 873-foot (266-meter) roundtrip effort would surpass the range, speed, and duration marks achieved on the third flight. Ingenuity was programmed to execute a fourth flight Friday, with a takeoff to take place at 10:46 a.m. EDT (7:46 a.m. PDT, 12:30 p.m. local Mars time) and first data to be returned at 1:39 p.m. EDT (10:39 a.m. PDT).

The fifth flight would send Ingenuity on a one-way mission, landing at the new site. If Ingenuity remains healthy after those flights, the next phase can begin.

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#104 2021-05-07 04:25:28

Tmcom
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Re: Ingenuity, Scouting Mars by Helicopter

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNx9hcrUpww&t=71s

Amazing how fast it can fly through all of that 98% carbon dioxide.

smile

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#105 2021-05-08 08:53:08

RobertDyck
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Re: Ingenuity, Scouting Mars by Helicopter

JPL: NASA’s Perseverance Captures Video, Audio of Fourth Ingenuity Flight

Sounds of the Mars Helicopter’s whirring rotors add another new dimension to the historic project.

For the first time, a spacecraft on another planet has recorded the sounds of a separate spacecraft. NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover used one of its two microphones to listen as the Ingenuity helicopter flew for the fourth time on April 30, 2021.

Sound is extremely faint.

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#106 2021-05-08 16:57:32

SpaceNut
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Re: Ingenuity, Scouting Mars by Helicopter

The blades are moving very fast so the sound of them will be high pitched and not audible. About the only thing I think you might hear is the spin up of the rotor and power down if its close enough to the pickup mic...

new record fifth flight altitude

Mars helicopter successfully flies to a new destination


See NASA's Mars helicopter settled into its new home after a successful fifth flight

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#107 2021-05-08 19:42:45

tahanson43206
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Re: Ingenuity, Scouting Mars by Helicopter

For SpaceNut re #106

Your comment about the rotation rate of the Ingenuity helicopter blades caught my eye, so I decided to ask Google for help ...

The twin blades can spin incredibly fast, about 2,400 rotations per minute, and were designed to propel the drone-like Ingenuity off the ground.

Middle C on the piano is given (by Google) as = 261.625565 hertz.

Dividing 2400 / 60 >> 240 / 6 >> 120 / 3 >> 40 revolutions per second

A musical tone of 40 Hertz is way ... lower than Middle C

Per Google:

40 Hz is a very deep bass tone – the kind of rumbling tone that you feel in your body as much as you hear it. Small speakers, such as laptop speakers or small computer speakers, don't go that low. If you try anyway, you will either hear nothing, or you will hear mostly – or only – distortion. What is distortion?

I would deduce from the observation above that if a person has a suitable amplifier, the "sound" might be felt as vibration in the speaker grill rather than heard with the human ear.

(th)

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#109 2021-05-09 21:18:01

Tmcom
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Re: Ingenuity, Scouting Mars by Helicopter

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#110 2021-05-18 12:06:37

Mars_B4_Moon
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Re: Ingenuity, Scouting Mars by Helicopter

I have seen many great concepts, the mathematics studied, ideas on drawing boards, Balloons on other planets and Airplanes, then Submarines on Titan and Europa, I think this helicopter was a fantastic idea, the helicopter can potentially travel such great distances compared to a Mars Rover. I'm guessing we will see greater ideas from NASA and JPL in the future and this was probably an 'operations demo' of sorts.

tahanson43206 wrote:

For SpaceNut re #106



A musical tone of 40 Hertz is way ... lower than Middle C



(th)


Yeah 40 Hz is way Low I think its like the Lowest 'E' on the piano, I have a chart around somewhere I can't sing well but I know I don't sing that low but maybe could ring up my friend who I jammed some tunes with one time he's an audio engineer and the last I hear from him he was pretty bored with these lockdowns so he might be good on this sound theory stuff.  An easy way to recall the music spaces and remember stuff 'Some-Where.....over the rainbow' maybe 1979 by Pumpkins and “Singin’ in the Rain” or very Beethoven up and downs in Classical music .... those big tonal jumps, is the interval between one musical pitch and another with double its frequency is the Octave.
Sound also changes with the medium its in, the speed of sound is slower decreases with increasing altitudes as you climb a mountain, the Speed of sound in Water is not the same as 'Air' in Water at 20 degrees Celsius is 1480 m/s some like 3,320 miles per hour, Underwater acoustics is a whole area of study by Marine biologists and the Navy.

Did you know your 'A' on your guitar or piano is typically 440 but at one time it had to be '435 Hz' governments after World War 1 even got together and set it as the standard written into law by the Treaty of Versailles. A number repeating frequency station in the US even broadcasts this note out on repeating times, the 440 is also known as Stuttgart pitch, the high 'a' above your Low A will be 880 Hz. So your 'A' note equals 440 yet may not have been 440 it may have been 432, it might have been A=423 or even lower...its strange the mathematical frequency definition how 'A' has changed or climbed upward over the years. So how would your funky rock band or your speakers sound if they were played on Mars, would you accept it as pleasant or would you think something sounds 'wrong' or out of tune?
How would the 'blend' of chordal notes the harmonics and anti-harmonics sound?
https://medium.com/today-i-learned-a/mu … 29289d18af
states the convention set the pitch at 435.

If you really want to go out there with this 'Tone' stuff try these exotic tones found on a micro tonal synth
https://offtonic.com/synth/index.html
maybe it is of tonal interest but not very pleasant when it comes to the acoustics of music

Mars the Helicopter, Ingenuity
I noticed they even gave it a commercial flight call sign, (IGY-1), call aircraft flight sign. Maybe this planet will become a very busy place one day.   

I hear one of the 'airstrips' in Jezero Crater might be named after the Wright brothers

Last edited by Mars_B4_Moon (2021-05-18 12:50:10)

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#111 2021-05-18 19:26:24

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Re: Ingenuity, Scouting Mars by Helicopter

The air plane that was inflatable that would glide with UV hardened wings seems that it could so quite nicely….

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#112 2021-05-23 08:43:31

SpaceNut
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Re: Ingenuity, Scouting Mars by Helicopter

repost

Mars_B4_Moon wrote:

Mars Ingenuity helicopter mission extended by NASA
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-56951752

It now has its own ICAO designator and a pilot logbook, flight (IGY-1), call sign (INGENUITY)
https://twitter.com/NASAJPL/status/1384216417239633926

'With five successful flights as of May 7, 2021, the battery-powered coaxial drone rotorcraft is serving as a technology demonstrator for the potential use of flying probes on future missions to Mars and other worlds, and will have the potential to scout locations of interest and support the future planning of driving routes for Mars rovers'
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingenuity_(helicopter)

Perseverance rover will soon begin collecting samples from Mars
https://www.digitaltrends.com/news/mars … on-update/

Ingenuity's Next Flight on Mars Could Be Its Most Interesting Yet
https://gizmodo.com/ingenuitys-next-fli … 1846942528

Not bad for a machine that was to be distroyed

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#113 2021-05-28 16:15:56

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Re: Ingenuity, Scouting Mars by Helicopter

NASA’s Mars helicopter had a midair brain fart

As it buzzed along at about nine miles per hour toward the end of the first 150-meter leg of its journey, a glitch in the helicopter’s navigation unit caused Ingenuity to suddenly lurch midair.

“Ingenuity began adjusting its velocity and tilting back and forth in an oscillating pattern,” rattled over what Grip said were “phantom errors” that caused “roll and pitch excursions of more than 20 degrees, large control inputs, and spikes in power consumption.”

Ingenuity’s flub occurred 54 seconds into flight when one of the black-and-white navigation images randomly disappeared, knocking the image pipeline out of order and rendering the timestamps on all subsequent images inaccurate.

Ingenuity landed safely about 16 feet from its intended touchdown spot, partly because the helicopter’s navigation unit is designed to ignore navigation images during the landing process, when it nears altitudes of around three feet. Relying only on data from the IMU, none of the images with glitch-inducing timestamps affected Ingenuity’s landing. “We designed Ingenuity to tolerate significant errors without becoming unstable, including errors in timing,” Grip said.

https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helico … th-flight/
AAKuLqx.img?h=450&w=799&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f

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#114 2021-06-08 21:22:26

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#115 2021-06-26 12:11:31

SpaceNut
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Re: Ingenuity, Scouting Mars by Helicopter

The Mars mission's seventh helicopter flight occurred on June 8 and now we learn that the 8 successful flights and counting for the Mars helicopter

On its latest outing, Ingenuity flew 525 feet (160 meters) to the south and southeast to a new airfield.

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#116 2021-07-06 20:10:40

SpaceNut
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Re: Ingenuity, Scouting Mars by Helicopter

We did not have a name for the helicopter when the rover was in the design phase.

Thanks for that post about Ingenuity's 9th flight as it was

instructed to fly over 2,050 feet (625 meters) at 16 feet (5 meters) per second and that the entire flight would last nearly three minutes.

AALQd26.img?h=450&w=799&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f

it appears that the helicopter is going up the hill side which is not a bad thing as we will find the air pressure level that it can not go above in time as we make that climb but also the views from the top will be great...

Second thing to not is it will get a bit more sun from being higher above the dust of the planet for power and hopefully we will get to use it until next winter....

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#117 2021-07-18 18:37:40

SpaceNut
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Re: Ingenuity, Scouting Mars by Helicopter

NASA studies bigger, better Mars helicopter

The new Mars aircraft either would be a larger version of Ingenuity, with two rotors, or a much bigger helicopter with six rotors, Tzanetos said. Ingenuity weighs only about 4 pounds; the biggest helicopter being studied would weigh up to 66 pounds.

NASA still is exploring Ingenuity's limits in terms of speed and distance, and engineers like Tzanetos use all new data from the little helicopter to guide research on possible future interplanetary aircraft.

A larger helicopter could carry equipment such as a spectrometer to analyze the composition of rocks. Ingenuity only has optical cameras.

NASA's research on a future helicopter includes a possible range of 10 to 15 miles per day; Ingenuity's longest flight so far was about 2,000 feet.

NASA plans to send another mission to Mars in 2026 to collect rock samples drilled by the Perseverance rover.

Seems Nasa is convince...

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#118 2021-07-23 20:57:11

SpaceNut
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Re: Ingenuity, Scouting Mars by Helicopter

Scale of distance for where the helicopter is and where the Insight land is.

Mars helicopter Ingenuity to fly near InSight and blow off the dust, JPL officials said. This operation is not only dangerous but impossible, they said, given the sheer distance between the two spacecraft — about 2,145 miles (3,452 kilometers).


The small chopper will surpass 1-mile (1.6 km) mark hopefully on the next flight on Saturday (July 24). It will soar over a rocky region called "Raised Ridges" at its Jezero Crater home.

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#119 2021-07-25 16:29:29

SpaceNut
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Re: Ingenuity, Scouting Mars by Helicopter

NASA's Mars helicopter nailed its 10th flight - double what engineers had hoped Ingenuity would do

Ingenuity climbed 40 feet in the air, then headed south-by-southwest toward a collection of rock features called "Raised Ridges," before looping back around to a landing zone about 310 feet west of its initial takeoff spot.

The flight should have lasted about 2 minutes, 45 seconds. During that time, Ingenuity is expected to have visited 10 distinct waypoints, snapping photos along the way.

66997162f85150279d4337c30e25ebe2

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#120 2021-08-06 21:50:44

SpaceNut
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Re: Ingenuity, Scouting Mars by Helicopter

NASA's Ingenuity helicopter has completed another safe flight on Mars, this time travelling 1,250ft in preparation for a series of reconnaissance missions for the Perseverance rover.AAMztTH.img?h=474&w=631&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f

INGENUITY FLIGHTS SO FAR
Flight one: April 19, 2021 with a vertical takeoff up to 9.8ft, stationary hover and a landing

Flight two: April 22, 2021 with a vertical takeoff up to 16ft, hover, then shift westward for 14ft before returning and landing

Flight three: April 25, 2021 with a vertical takeoff up to 16ft, hover, shift northwards for 328ft at an airspeed of 2 m/s before returning to land

Flight four: April 30, 2021 with a vertical takeoff up to 16ft, hover, shift southwards 873ft at 3.5m/s before returning to land

Flight five: May 7, 2021 with a vertical takeoff up to 33ft, hover, shift southwards 423ft at 3.5 m/s before landing at that new location

Flight six: May 22, 2021 with a vertical takeoff of 33ft, hover, shift southwest 492ft at 9mph, travel 49ft south, travel 164ft before returning to land

Flight seven: June 8, 2021 with a vertical takeoff of 33ft, hover, shift 348ft at 9mph, land at Airfield D

Flight eight: June 21, 2021 with a vertical takeoff, hover, shift southwest 520ft, land at Airfield E 438ft away from Perseverance

Flight nine: July 5, 2021 with a record length of 2,050ft southwest over a prospective research location at 16ft per second.

Flight ten: July 24, 2021 with a record height of 40 feet (12 metres) over Raised Ridges to Airfield G. Flight duration 165.4 seconds.   

Flight eleven: August 5, 2021 by flying 1,250ft for 130 seconds in preparation for a series of reconnaissance missions for the Perseverance rover.

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#121 2021-08-15 17:45:08

SpaceNut
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Re: Ingenuity, Scouting Mars by Helicopter

Seems that the 11 th flight got a picture of the Perseverance, as seen from 1,600 feet away and 39 feet in the air.

Mars explorer Ingenuity helicopter spots Perseverance rover from above

Possible path that the rover may take in its exploration
Jezero-Crater-Perseverance-First-Science-Campaign-Routes-777x437.jpg

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#122 2021-08-15 19:48:29

tahanson43206
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Re: Ingenuity, Scouting Mars by Helicopter

For SpaceNut .... I spent more time than I should have trying to find Perseverance in the image at the link you provided.

I used Ctrl/+ to enlarge the image as far as it would go without success.

However, JPL kindly provided a blowup showing the rover, and I'm going to try to drop off the link here:

e-PIA24793.jpg

Hope this works ...

(th)

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#123 2021-08-17 08:06:38

SpaceNut
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Re: Ingenuity, Scouting Mars by Helicopter

Seems the 12th flight is to scout ahead for the rover to target science interests and a path
AANo8rO.img?h=385&w=799&m=6&q=60&o=f&l=f

The rover appears to be avoiding the sand and sticking to a more solid footing.

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#124 2021-08-17 08:24:48

GW Johnson
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Re: Ingenuity, Scouting Mars by Helicopter

Staying out of soft sand is no surprise. 

Guess what:  same is true for landing,  unless you lower the weight per unit foot pad area drastically by using huge pads.  Which is what every successful lander has done since the beginning (on the moon or Mars),  because you never really know where the soft sand is,  until you land. Remote sensing is still not what it is often claimed to be.  Ground truth is still often substantially different.   

GW


GW Johnson
McGregor,  Texas

"There is nothing as expensive as a dead crew,  especially one dead from a bad management decision"

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#125 2021-09-17 19:58:07

tahanson43206
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Re: Ingenuity, Scouting Mars by Helicopter

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/technolo … hp&pc=U531

NASA: Flying the Mars Ingenuity helicopter is 'getting harder and harder'
Amanda Kooser  20 mins ago

High-risk, high-reward. NASA's Mars helicopter gamble has paid off as Ingenuity continues to soar over the Martian landscape as a scout for the Perseverance rover. It's been a triumphant mission, but the helicopter's job is getting a lot tougher to perform.

Havard Grip, Ingenuity's chief pilot, talked about the challenges facing the chopper in a NASA status update this week. The density of the atmosphere in the Jezero Crater is dropping, a factor Grip said has "a significant impact on Ingenuity's ability to fly."

(th)

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