Ingenuity on historic 1st powered flight on another world

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NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity takes off on historic 1st powered flight on another world | Space
NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity takes off on historic 1st powered flight on another world
By Mike Wall 3 hours ago
A new world of flight opportunities just opened up

The aerial exploration of Mars has begun.

NASA's Ingenuity helicopter lifted off on the Red Planet early this morning (April 19), performing the first-ever powered flight on a world beyond Earth.

The 4-lb. (1.8 kilograms) chopper was scheduled to rise from the floor of Mars' Jezero Crater at 12:31 a.m. EDT (0431 GMT) today, get a maximum of 10 feet (3 meters) above the red dirt and land after roughly 40 seconds aloft.
At about 6:15 a.m. EDT (1015 GMT), data came down from Ingenuity — via its much larger partner, NASA's Perseverance rover — that the little rotorcraft had hit its marks. The first photo from Ingenuity showed the helicopter's shadow on the Martian surface below, while the Perseverance rover captured stunning video of the historic flight on Mars.
"Ingenuity has performed its first flight, the first flight of a powered aircraft on another planet!" Ingenuity's chief pilot Håvard Grip said as he confirmed telemetry at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Brief though today's flight was, it may well be game-changing, paving the way for extensive exploration by Martian aircraft down the road. Thanks to Ingenuity's groundbreaking work, future Red Planet missions could commonly include choppers as scouts for rovers or data collectors in their own right, NASA officials have said.
Video: Watch Ingenuity's first flight on Mars

An image captured by the Ingenuity Mars helicopter shows the vehicle's shadow on the surface of the Red Planet during its historic first flight on April 19, 2021. (Image credit: NASA TV)

Pioneering Martian flight

Join our forums here to discuss the Perseverance rover and Ingenuity helicopter on Mars. What do you hope they find?
Ingenuity's $85 million mission is a technology demonstration, designed to show that powered, controlled flight is possible on the Red Planet. This was far from a given; the Martian atmosphere is just 1% as dense as that of Earth at sea level, so there's not much air for helicopter blades to push against. This disadvantage outweighs the benefits that aircraft gain from Mars' lower gravitational pull, which is just 38% as strong as Earth's.

Ingenuity flew to Mars attached to the belly of Perseverance, landing inside Jezero with the $2.7 billion rover on Feb. 18. Early this month, the solar-powered rotorcraft deployed onto the crater floor and began prepping for its historic month-long flight campaign, which was originally supposed to begin on April 11.
The core team behind Ingenuity's pioneering flight watched the Mars flight from a control room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. They stood, threw up their hands and cheered as the flight's success was confirmed.

NASA Mars Helicopter Ingenuity project manager MiMi Aung (left) celebrates with her team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California after seeing images from the first successful flight on Mars by the Ingenuity helicopter on April 19, 2021 (Image credit: NASA TV)

MiMi Aung, Ingenuity's project manager, triumphantly tore up her contingency speech (written in case of a failure) and hailed Ingenuity's historic feat on Mars. Every planet, she's said in the past, has gets only one first flight.
"We can now say that human beings have flown a rotorcraft on another planet!" Aung said as her team cheered. "We've been talking so long about our Wright brothers moment on Mars and here it is."
NASA named Ingenuity's Martian airfield used by Ingenuity the Wright Brothers Field after Orville and Wilbur Wright, who performed the first heavier-than-air flight on Earth in 1903. There's a piece of their Wright Flyer plane on Ingenuity to mark the event.
Because of COVID-19 pandemic restrictions, much of Ingenuity's mission team watched the event via a WebEx video conference. Aung sent them all remote hugs of success.
"You know I'm hugging you virtually," Aung told her team.

Related: How the Mars helicopter Ingenuity flies on the Red Planet

This still image from NASA's Perseverance rover on Mars shows the Mars Helicopter Ingenuity hovering above the Martian surface during its historic first flight on April 19, 2021. (Image credit: NASA TV)
Ingenuity's flight campaign is not focused on gathering data; Ingenuity carries no scientific instruments, though it is equipped with a black-and-white navigation camera and a 13-megapixel color imager. It is meant only to prove that the feat is possible.
The 19-inch-tall (48 centimeters) helicopter sailed through the preflight checks until the final one, an attempted high-speed spin test of the craft's twin, 4-foot-long (1.2 m) rotors on April 9. Those carbon-fiber blades were supposed to spin at about 2,400 revolutions per minute — the rotational velocity they achieve during operational flight — while Ingenuity remained on the ground. But the chopper suffered an issue with its "watchdog timer" and failed to transition into flight mode as required by the test.
The mission team initially pushed the flight back to April 14, then delayed it again to troubleshoot the issue further. On Saturday (April 17), Aung announced that the team was confident it had found a fix — an adjustment of the command sequence beamed from Earth — and set today as the targeted first-flight date.

NASA's Mars Helicopter Ingenuity team celebrates after seeing a view of the drone's first flight on Mars captured by the Perseverance rover on April 19, 2021 as they watched from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. (Image credit: NASA TV)
"This solution is the least disruptive to a helicopter that, up until we identified the watchdog issue, has been behaving just as we expected," Aung wrote in a blog post Saturday. "It is the most straightforward, since we do not have to change its configuration."
The fix was effective, as this morning's flight shows. Ingenuity flew as planned with the modified command sequence, becoming the first robot ever to ply Mars' thin, dusty skies.
Don't assume from this focus on commands, however, that Ingenuity is a mindless drone; the little robot is capable of significant autonomy. For example, Ingenuity gets its bearings during flight in real time by analyzing the photos snapped by its navigation camera.

More to come
Ingenuity will fly again soon, if all goes according to plan — up to four more times, in fact, during its month-long window.
The helicopter will likely go slightly higher and farther on flights two and three, getting up to 16.5 feet (5 m) off the ground and moving a maximum of 165 feet (50 m) downrange, Aung said during a news conference earlier this month. If Ingenuity aces those next two flights, sorties four and five could be "really adventurous," she added.
"History does tell us that soon after their first flight, Orville and Wilbur did go right back to work," Aung said of the Wright brothers who performed the first heavier-than-air flight on Earth at Kitty Hawk, North Carolina on Dec. 17, 1903. They flew three more times that day, each one higher and farther than the last, Aung said.
"This is just the first great flight," Aung said. "Congratulations, take a moment and then let's get back to work!"
Perseverance will serve as support during the entire flight campaign; communications to and from Ingenuity must go through the rover, after all. But that campaign is hard-capped at one month in duration, because Perseverance needs to focus on its own work soon. That work has two main components — hunting for evidence of ancient Mars life on the floor of the 28-mile-wide (45 kilometers) Jezero, which hosted a lake and a river delta billions of years ago, and collecting and caching dozens of samples.
Those samples will be hauled to Earth by a joint NASA/European Space Agency campaign, potentially as early as 2031. Scientists around the world will then be able to analyze the pristine Mars material in far greater detail than Perseverance ever could, capable and complex though the rover is.

 

[TruthSeeker]

NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity will attempt its 2nd flight Thursday
By Hanneke Weitering - Editor 2 minutes ago

NASA's Ingenuity helicopter is seen during its first flight on Mars on April 19, 2021, in this view from the Perseverance rover's Navigation Camera, or Navcam. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity is ready for another epic Red Planet flight.

Ingenuity, which arrived on Mars with NASA's Perseverance rover in February and made history Monday (April 19) with the first-ever powered flight on another world, will attempt its second flight Thursday (April 22) at 5:30 a.m. EDT (0930 GMT), MiMi Aung, Ingenuity project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, wrote in a status update.
"We're looking to go a little bigger this time," Aung wrote in the update. While Monday's flight involved Ingenuity hovering 10 feet (3 meters) above the Red Planet's surface, Thursday's flight will see Ingenuity go a bit higher, to 16 feet (5 m), Aung said. Ingenuity will then tilt slightly and move sideways for 7 feet (2 m), hover in place and turn a few times so that its color camera can snap some images before returning to its Martian airfield for a landing, she added.
"The imagery of the first flight Perseverance captured with its Navcam and Mastcam-Z imagers from its vantage point about 210 feet (64 meters) away at 'Van Zyl Overlook' was spectacular," Aung said. "We're expecting more phenomenal imagery on this second flight test."
NASA has not yet announced any live webcasts to reveal the imagery from Ingenuity's second flight, as it did with the first flight on Monday. Images will be posted on NASA's Ingenuity page when they come in.

 

[TruthSeeker]

Apr 22, 2021
NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Logs Second Successful Flight

NASA’s Mars Perseverance rover acquired this image using its left Mastcam-Z camera. Mastcam-Z is a pair of cameras located high on the rover’s mast. This is one still frame from a sequence captured by the camera while taking video. This image was acquired on Apr. 22, 2021.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS

The small rotorcraft’s horizons were expanded on its second flight.

NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter successfully completed its second Mars flight on April 22 – the 18th sol, or Martian day, of its experimental flight test window. Lasting 51.9 seconds, the flight added several new challenges to the first, which took place on April 19, including a higher maximum altitude, longer duration, and sideways movement.

“So far, the engineering telemetry we have received and analyzed tell us that the flight met expectations and our prior computer modeling has been accurate,” said Bob Balaram, chief engineer for the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “We have two flights of Mars under our belts, which means that there is still a lot to learn during this month of Ingenuity.”

For this second flight test at “Wright Brothers Field,” Ingenuity took off again at 5:33 a.m. EDT (2:33 a.m. PDT), or 12:33 p.m. local Mars time. But where Flight One topped out at 10 feet (3 meters) above the surface, Ingenuity climbed to 16 feet (5 meters) this time. After the helicopter hovered briefly, its flight control system performed a slight (5-degree) tilt, allowing some of the thrust from the counter-rotating rotors to accelerate the craft sideways for 7 feet (2 meters).

“The helicopter came to a stop, hovered in place, and made turns to point its camera in different directions,” said Håvard Grip, Ingenuity’s chief pilot at JPL. “Then it headed back to the center of the airfield to land. It sounds simple, but there are many unknowns regarding how to fly a helicopter on Mars. That’s why we’re here – to make these unknowns known.”


The Ingenuity Mars Helicopter’s navigation camera captures the helicopter's shadow on the surface of Jezero Crater during rotorcraft’s second experimental test flight on April 22, 2021.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Operating an aircraft in a controlled manner at Mars is far more difficult than flying one on Earth. Even though gravity on Mars is about one third that of Earth’s, the helicopter must fly with the assistance of an atmosphere with only about 1% of the density at Earth’s surface. Each second of each flight provides an abundance of Mars in-flight data for comparison to the modeling, simulations, and tests performed back here on Earth. And NASA also gains its first practical experience operating a rotorcraft remotely at Mars. These datasets will prove invaluable for potential future Mars missions that could enlist next-generation helicopters to add an aerial dimension to their explorations.

The Ingenuity Mars Helicopter project is a high-risk, high-reward technology demonstration. If Ingenuity were to encounter difficulties during its 30-sol mission, the science-gathering of NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover mission wouldn’t be impacted.

As with the first test, the Perseverance rover obtained imagery of the flight attempt from 211 feet (64.3 meters) away at “Van Zyl Overlook” using its Navcam and Mastcam-Z imagers. The initial set of data – including imagery – from the flight was received by the Ingenuity team beginning at 9:20 a.m. EDT (6:20 a.m. PDT).

“For the second flight, we tried a slightly different approach to the zoom level on one of the cameras,” said Justin Maki, Perseverance project imaging scientist and Mastcam-Z deputy principal investigator at JPL. “For the first flight, one of the cameras was fully zoomed in on the takeoff and landing zone. For the second flight we zoomed that camera out a bit for a wider field of view to capture more of the flight.”

Because the data and imagery indicate that the Mars Helicopter not only survived the second flight but also flew as anticipated, the Ingenuity team is considering how best to expand the profiles of its next flights to acquire additional aeronautical data from the first successful flight tests on another world.

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, Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, and Space Technology Mission Directorate. NASA’s Ames Research Center and Langley Research Center provided significant flight performance analysis and technical assistance during Ingenuity’s development.

At NASA Headquarters, Dave Lavery is the program executive for the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter. At JPL, MiMi Aung is the project manager and J. (Bob) Balaram is chief engineer.

For more information about Ingenuity:

https://go.nasa.gov/ingenuity-press-kit

and

https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/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.

For more about Perseverance:

nasa.gov/perseverance

and

mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/
​

Alana Johnson / Grey Hautaluoma

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

 

[TruthSeeker]

Perseverance Mars Rover
May 7, 2021
NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Completes First One-Way Trip

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter’s fifth flight was captured on May 7, 2021, by one of the navigation cameras aboard the agency’s Perseverance rover. This was the first time it flew to a new landing site.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The Red Planet rotorcraft headed south in support of furthering research into the potential use of aerial scouts on Mars in the future.

More About Ingenuity
Code a Mars Helicopter Video Game
Six Things to Know About Ingenuity
Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Press Kit
Make a Paper Mars Helicopter

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter completed its fifth flight on the Red Planet today with its first one-way journey from Wright Brothers Field to an airfield 423 feet (129 meters) to the south. After arrival above its new airfield, Ingenuity climbed to an altitude record of 33 feet (10 meters) and captured high-resolution color images of its new neighborhood before touching down.

The flight represents the rotorcraft’s transition to its new operations demonstration phase. This phase will focus on investigating what kind of capabilities a rotorcraft operating from Mars can provide. Examples include scouting, aerial observations of areas not accessible by a rover, and detailed stereo imaging from atmospheric altitudes. These operations and the lessons learned from them could significantly benefit future aerial exploration of Mars and other worlds.

“The fifth flight of the Mars Helicopter is another great achievement for the agency,” said Bob Pearce, associate administrator for NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate. “The continuing success of Ingenuity proves the value of bringing together the strengths of diverse skill sets from across the agency to create the future, like flying an aircraft on another planet!”

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter’s was captured after landing on May 7, 2021, by the Mastcam-Z imager aboard the agency’s Perseverance rover. This was the helicopter’s fifth flight, and the first time the helicopter flew to a new landing site. It was airborne a total of 108 seconds.
Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS

The flight began at 3:26 p.m. EDT (12:26 p.m. PDT, 12:33 p.m. local Mars time) and lasted 108 seconds. The Ingenuity team chose the new landing site based on information gathered during the previous flight – the first “aerial scout” operation on another world – which enabled them to generate digital elevation maps indicating almost completely flat terrain with almost no obstructions.

“We bid adieu to our first Martian home, Wright Brothers Field, with grateful thanks for the support it provided to the historic first flights of a planetary rotorcraft,” said Bob Balaram, chief engineer for Ingenuity Mars Helicopter at JPL. “No matter where we go from here, we will always carry with us a reminder of how much those two bicycle builders from Dayton meant to us during our pursuit of the first flight on another world.”

The Wright brothers went on from proving powered, controlled flight was possible to attempting to better understand how the new technology could be employed. In a similar fashion, NASA seeks to learn more with Ingenuity how operations with next-generation helicopters could benefit future exploration of the Red Planet. This new phase will bring added risk to Ingenuity, with more one-way flights and more precision maneuvering.

Having successfully landed at its new airfield, Ingenuity will await future instructions, relayed via Perseverance, from mission controllers. The agency’s fifth rover to the fourth planet is also heading south, toward a region where it will commence science operations and sample collection. The rover team’s near-term strategy doesn’t require long drives that would leave the helicopter far behind, allowing Ingenuity to continue with this operations demonstration.

“The plan forward is to fly Ingenuity in a manner that does not reduce the pace of Perseverance science operations,” said Balaram. “We may get a couple more flights in over the next few weeks, and then the agency will evaluate how we’re doing. We have already been able to gather all the flight performance data that we originally came here to collect. Now, this new operations demo gives us an opportunity to further expand our knowledge of flying machines on other planets.”

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, Aeronautics, and Space Technology mission directorates. 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 in designed and manufactured the Mars Helicopter Delivery System.
At NASA Headquarters, Dave Lavery is the program executive for the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter. At JPL, MiMi Aung is the project manager and J. “Bob” Balaram is chief engineer.
For more information about Ingenuity:

https://go.nasa.gov/ingenuity-press-kit

and

https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter​

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

On May 7th, 2021 NASA’s Perseverance captured Ingenuity Mars Helicopter’s first one-way trip without coming back to previous location. The helicopter ascended to a new height record of 33 feet (10 meters) flew 424 feet (129 meters) to a new landing site. After a total flight time of about 110 seconds, Ingenuity landed at Airfield B (new location) completing its first one-way trip. When it touched down at its new location, new demonstration phase began. The flight represents the rotorcraft’s transition to its new operations demonstration phase. This phase will focus on investigating what kind of capabilities a rotorcraft operating from Mars can provide. Examples include scouting, aerial observations of areas not accessible by a rover, and detailed stereo imaging from atmospheric altitudes. These operations and the lessons learned from them could significantly benefit future aerial exploration of Mars and other worlds.

 

[Sabretooth]

So now earth has UFOs on other planet.

Watching video feed of an event hundreds of million miles away, was an amazing feat in itself.

 

[TruthSeeker]

So now earth has UFOs on other planet.

Watching video feed of an event hundreds of million miles away, was an amazing feat in itself.

I think you are correct about Ingenuity being "unidentified". all the in situ photos of Ingenuity that I can find show no NASA or other markings. So, if an indigenous Martian spots Ingenuity, zie would not know that the craft came from Earth.

 

[TruthSeeker]

NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity set for 7th Red Planet flight on Sunday
By Mike Wall about 10 hours ago
Ingenuity will head toward another new airfield.

This image was taken from the height of 33 feet (10 meters) by NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter during its sixth flight on May 22, 2021. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity will take to the air again this weekend, if all goes according to plan.

Ingenuity's handlers are prepping the 4-lb. (1.8 kilograms) chopper for its seventh Martian flight, which will take place no earlier than Sunday (June 6). The plan is to send Ingenuity to a new airfield, about 350 feet (105 meters) south of its current location on the floor of Jezero Crater.
"This will mark the second time the helicopter will land at an airfield that it did not survey from the air during a previous flight," NASA officials wrote in an update on Friday (June 4). "Instead, the Ingenuity team is relying on imagery collected by the HiRISE camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter that suggests this new base of operations is relatively flat and has few surface obstructions."
Data from the flight will be beamed home to Earth over the three days following the flight, they added.

Ingenuity also flew to an unscouted airfield on its sixth flight, which occurred on May 22 and did not go 100% smoothly. The solar-powered rotorcraft suffered a glitch that briefly interrupted the flow of photos from its navigation camera to its onboard computer. But Ingenuity managed to power through the anomaly, landing safely close to its designated touchdown spot.
Ingenuity landed with NASA's Perseverance rover inside the 28-mile-wide (45 kilometers) Jezero on Feb. 18. On April 3, the helicopter deployed from Perseverance's belly, kicking off a month-long flight campaign designed to demonstrate that powered flight is possible on Mars.
Ingenuity aced that original mission with five flights, which got successively more complex and ambitious. NASA then granted a mission extension for the helicopter, which focuses on showcasing the scouting potential of Martian rotorcraft. Sunday's planned flight will be the second one in this new campaign.

Perseverance documented Ingenuity's first five flights extensively, capturing video and audio of the history-making hops. But the rover has now begun focusing on its own science mission, which involves hunting for signs of ancient Mars life and collecting samples for future return to Earth, so shots of Ingenuity in action are harder to come by these days.

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity set for 7th Red Planet flight on Sunday
By Mike Wall about 10 hours ago
Ingenuity will head toward another new airfield.

This image was taken from the height of 33 feet (10 meters) by NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter during its sixth flight on May 22, 2021. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

NASA's Mars helicopter Ingenuity will take to the air again this weekend, if all goes according to plan.

Ingenuity's handlers are prepping the 4-lb. (1.8 kilograms) chopper for its seventh Martian flight, which will take place no earlier than Sunday (June 6). The plan is to send Ingenuity to a new airfield, about 350 feet (105 meters) south of its current location on the floor of Jezero Crater.
"This will mark the second time the helicopter will land at an airfield that it did not survey from the air during a previous flight," NASA officials wrote in an update on Friday (June 4). "Instead, the Ingenuity team is relying on imagery collected by the HiRISE camera aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter that suggests this new base of operations is relatively flat and has few surface obstructions."
Data from the flight will be beamed home to Earth over the three days following the flight, they added.

Ingenuity also flew to an unscouted airfield on its sixth flight, which occurred on May 22 and did not go 100% smoothly. The solar-powered rotorcraft suffered a glitch that briefly interrupted the flow of photos from its navigation camera to its onboard computer. But Ingenuity managed to power through the anomaly, landing safely close to its designated touchdown spot.
Ingenuity landed with NASA's Perseverance rover inside the 28-mile-wide (45 kilometers) Jezero on Feb. 18. On April 3, the helicopter deployed from Perseverance's belly, kicking off a month-long flight campaign designed to demonstrate that powered flight is possible on Mars.
Ingenuity aced that original mission with five flights, which got successively more complex and ambitious. NASA then granted a mission extension for the helicopter, which focuses on showcasing the scouting potential of Martian rotorcraft. Sunday's planned flight will be the second one in this new campaign.

Perseverance documented Ingenuity's first five flights extensively, capturing video and audio of the history-making hops. But the rover has now begun focusing on its own science mission, which involves hunting for signs of ancient Mars life and collecting samples for future return to Earth, so shots of Ingenuity in action are harder to come by these days.

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

NASA's Mars helicopter soars past 1-mile mark in 10th flight over Red Planet

It was Ingenuity's highest flight yet, too.

www.space.com

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

 

[Hamartia Antidote]

Mars helicopter Ingenuity flies low and slow on lucky flight 13

The little chopper continues to scout terrain for NASA's Perseverance Mars rover.

www.space.com