Sometimes simply removing the battery and putting it back in again will do the trick.

It does beg the question why was this not discovered during testing before it was launched?

All you'd need would be an environmental chamber where you could adjust temperature, atmosphere and gravity.

The giant vacuum chamber sounds good. The bit of string simulating weak gravity a bit less so..

Anyone know what the pair of 'ears' near the root of each rotor are for?

This is just a guess but they look like Chinese weights to me. Their centrifugal moment counters the zero-pitch return moment from the rotor blades so that pitch control is more stable.

Maybe they haven’t paid an EASA bill.

I hope they don't suffer a MITM (Martian-In-The-Middle) attack during the new software upload, or the dreaded green screen of death.
Seriously, I wonder how they assessed the risk of applying the software patch against the high potential of making things even worse. I really do hope it all works out in the end as the pictures would be out of this world.

They'll definitely have some Martian Packets to contend with.

The other martian lander, InSight,has had to restrict its experiments, as its solar panels are covered in dust.

Would be captivating and fab PR, if the helicopter could be used to fly across country/planet to blow dust off the panels of the dying lander:) The downdraft has to be equal to the weight of the helicopter, but are there any other factors to consider in this mission in relation to a thin atmosphere?


InSight has a small robotic arm, I wonder why these arms aren't designed to sweep dust from the panels?
https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....f0f5ea1dcf.png

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/i...ain/index.html
Mjb

Presumably that opened like an umbrella. Oops, did it go 'click'?

Well done! - successful first flight.

Yep, well done NASA. Great achievement.

4 pound helicopter that requires 10 pilots .
This is progress ??

View of first flight from 140 million miles away!

- Ed


https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/pprune....02dadb9cd0.jpg

It needs all those people to analyse the data sent back over an average of 140 million miles which takes more than 16 minutes to transit to Earth.

Flight control is autonomous :)

Well done Ingenuity crew !

Flying with rotor blades in atmospheric pressure of 0.095 psi is impressive, equivalent of over 100,000 ft.

Indeed. I was really surprised that it could be done at all. That being said not sure what actual use future developments will have. This is very much on the edge of practical use IMHO

It takes 7 months, not years to travel each way.

https://www.icao.int/Newsroom/Pages/...operation.aspx

Interesting quirk by NASA in celebration of that flight ;)

To be fair, that 7 month window from earth to mars only opens every 26 months, transfers outside that window will take considerably longer.

Practical use on earth I'd suggest is limited (though there's always some trickle across, but it's never the obvious stuff!). However, in terms of planetary exploration it's a pretty big deal.

A long time friend works in that area and just one of their ideas is if you need small samples over a wide area, a sample retrieval system attached to the bottom of an autonomous helicopter that goes and fetches, come home, recharges and dumps the sample, then goes and does it again, allows them to cover huge amounts of territory by comparison to previous vehicles. To put this into context, Opportunity drove 45 or so kilometers in 14 and half years (2004-2018).

One of the uses given by local news is to use the helo to reconnoiter for interesting sites that the rover may then visit, save time and mileage on the rover wandering somewhat randomly looking for something worthwhile.

After more than 18 months on Mars, still active. A flight on 6th Sept. lasting 56 seconds, and 97 meters.
31st sortie - not bad for a “proof-of-concept” trial !


https://www.space.com/mars-helicopte...ht-river-delta

AS ever yet another of NASA's proof of concept vehicles vastly outperforming it's published life and capability.
Amazing stuff.

As of 9 Nov 23 Completing 118.8 flying minutes, covering 9.3 miles (14.9 km), and reaching altitudes as high as 78.7 ft (24.0 m), 66 flights
Space Ingenuity

Made it all the way to Flight 72 before damage during a landing ended the mission

They've done amazingly well with it. An ex colleague of mine wrote his r/c helicopter off ground taxying it for its first ever takeoff and he was standing only a few yards away from it!

So..... Air is 1/140 earth sea level but gravity is 1/3. Mach 1 isn't that fast at all. So it seems rotors wouldn't work at first thought. Hmmm, does it hover? In order to lift, the engine must produce enough HP to accelerate up at 1G (martian) . Then the rotors must convert rotational HP to moving air HP. My first guess would be really big rotors but then Mach 1 comes into play.
Seems like it wouldn't add up.

Blade tip speed was <0,7 Mach. So no problem. JPL already tested the rotor for the next Mars helicopter with speeds up to 0,96 Mach

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ingenuity_(helicopter)

skadi

Wondering if they have tried or will try to fly it with that damage?

That would propably destroy Inguenity, with the loss of those big parts of the blade(s) the vibrations will exeed the limits for a safe flight and I am sure the produced lift won't be enough anyway.

skadi

You need to keep it intact for Elon's museum.

If an aircraft is "grounded" on earth it is "???" on Mars..

A slim flexible strengthening rim might have been in order, not only to protect Martian locals from the naked blades.

Don’t they have ground on Mars?