After over 8 weeks of silence,
the Mars Ingenuity helicopter is talking again.
Ingenuity weighs just 4 pounds and moves thanks to rotors 4 feet long from tip to tip. It is powered by lithium-ion batteries that get their juice from solar panels. The little chopper took to the Martian skies on April 26 for its 52nd flight but lost contact with mission controllers before landing — creating a months long communications blackout
Ingenuity phoned home again on June 28, relieving any potential concerns about the safety and whereabouts of the first aircraft on another world. That’s still a long time to NASA to wait for confirmation that Ingenuity landed safely. Ingenuity communicates with mission control at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, by relaying all messages through the Perseverance rover. When Ingenuity took off for flight 52, a hill presented an obstacle blocking the helicopter and rover from communicating with each other.
“The portion where rover and helicopter are currently exploring has a lot of rugged terrain, which makes communications dropouts more likely,” said Josh Anderson, the Ingenuity team lead at JPL. While the two robots make for a dynamic duo, it’s difficult for them. Ingenuity was designed to fly for just 90 seconds at a time in the thin Martian atmosphere (which is just 1 percent that of Earth) and to distances of 980 feet, while moving up to 15 feet off the ground.
Ingenuity began as a technology demonstration to test if a small rotorcraft could fly on Mars. After surpassing all expectations across five successful flights in 2021, it transitioned to become an aerial scout, flying ahead of the Perseverance rover and plotting out safe and scientifically interesting pathways for the rover’s exploration.
It’s not the first time the mission team has experienced communication drops with Ingenuity that last an “agonizingly long time.” The vehicle is also still contending with a buildup of dust on its solar panel that occurred during the Martian winter. It can also be bone-chillingly cold at Jezero Crater, where Perseverance will land with Ingenuity attached to its belly. Nights there dip down to minus 130 degrees Fahrenheit. While Ingenuity’s team on Earth has tested the helicopter at Martian temperatures and believes it should work on Mars as intended, the cold will push the design limits of many of Ingenuity’s parts. So much to the chagrin of her team, they are not yet done playing this high-stakes game of hide and seek.
Ingenuity has overcome landing on Mars, survived frigid nights and numerous record-breaking flights, and its journey to explore Mars like never before continues. Originally, the helicopter team wanted to push the vehicle until it broke. But now the researchers are flying more cautiously and less often. Flight engineers are already planning another aerial excursion for the helicopter in a few weeks.
Meanwhile, engineers are already dreaming of the next Martian aircraft.
