NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Completes First Flight With New Navigation Software

Compared to a number of the alternative flights this beyond year, Ingenuity Mars Helicopter’s Flight 34 may not stand out. Wednesday’s a hit 18-2d flight became even shorter than Ingenuity’s first flight; the Mars helicopter in reality popped as much as a touch over sixteen feet (five meters), hovered, then landed. Despite the flight’s easy nature, the group may be very excited due to what it way for the destiny of Ingenuity.

Over the beyond few weeks, the operations group has been at paintings putting in a chief software program replace aboard the helicopter. This replace offers Ingenuity with foremost new capabilities: danger avoidance whilst touchdown and the usage of virtual elevation maps to assist navigate. Developed as a era demonstration, Ingenuity became designed to perform on Mars in flat, easy terrain like that at Wright Brothers Field. As Ingenuity moved directly to exploring Jezero Crater along the Perseverance rover, we traveled via greater tough terrain than the group had ever anticipated.

In preceding flights, Ingenuity’s pilots had to discover airfields freed from any rocks or different barriers that might doubtlessly harm the car whilst touchdown. Jezero Crater is a rocky place, so secure airfields were hard to discover! Using Ingenuity’s downward-dealing with navigation camera, this software program replace provides danger avoidance on touchdown. While in flight, Ingenuity will become aware of the most secure seen touchdown site. When getting ready to land, Ingenuity will then divert over to this decided on site. This functionality permits Ingenuity to soundly land in rockier terrain than before, offering our pilots with many greater ability touchdown sites.

Ingenuity’s navigation software program became designed to count on the car became flying over flat terrain. When the helicopter is flying over terrain like hills, this flat-floor assumption reasons Ingenuity’s navigation software program to suppose the car is veering, inflicting Ingenuity to begin without a doubt veering in an try to counter the error. Over lengthy flights, navigation mistakes as a result of hard terrain have to be accounted for, requiring the group to pick big airfields. This new software program replace corrects this flat-floor assumption with the aid of using the use of virtual elevation maps of Jezero Crater to assist the navigation software program distinguish among adjustments in terrain and car movement. This will increase Ingenuity’s accuracy, permitting the pilots to goal smaller airfields going forward.

Although Flight 34 might not appear to be much, it became Ingenuity’s first with this software program replace. The group will use outcomes from this easy flight to begin checking out those new capabilities, making sure that the whole thing works as anticipated at the floor of Mars. The replace brings out new capability in Ingenuity, making it a much greater succesful car and powerful scout for Perseverance. We’re all excited to peer in which this replace will permit us to take Ingenuity’s adventure next! Written with the aid of using Joshua Anderson, Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Operations Lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory