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.