The NASA helicopter Ingenuity on Mars made the first powered controlled flights by an aircraft on a planet other than Earth.[1][2] Its first flight was April 19, 2021, after landing February 18 attached to the underside of the Perseverance rover.[3]Ingenuity weighs 1.8 kilograms (4.0 lb) and is 49 cm (19 in) tall. It is powered by six lithium-ion solar-charged batteries.[4] It was built and is operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), a field center of NASA. It was designed for a 30-day demonstration period, but has operated far above expectations, making its 43rd flight on February 16, 2023 (UTC), 668 days after its first flight.
The first powered flight by any aircraft on another planet. While hovering, it rotated in place 96 degrees in a planned maneuver. Flight data was received at 11:30 UTC.[7][8]
From initial hover, it tilted 5 degrees, allowing rotors to fly it 2 meters sideways. It stopped, hovered in place, and rotated counterclockwise, yawing from +90° to 0° to -90° to -180°, in 3 steps, to point its color camera in various directions to take photos. It flew back to the takeoff location and landed.[11]
First flight to venture some distance from the deployment spot. It flew downrange 50 meters at two meters per second, stopped, hovered, then returned and landed at the departure spot.[14] Data from the flight was received at 14:16 UTC.[13]
Took color images while hovering at its farthest point from takeoff.[19] The Perseverance rover recorded both audio and video of Ingenuity in flight,[21] making the helicopter the first interplanetary vehicle whose sound was recorded off Earth.
This was the first flight to land at a new location, 129 m (423 ft) to the south. Arriving above the destination, it gained altitude, hovered, captured color terrain images, then landed at the new site, Airfield B.[23][24] This flight was the last in the technology demonstration phase.
At each turn into the flight, colour images were taken. Near the end of the first leg of the route at 54 seconds into flight, a glitch occurred in the navigation images processing system. An image was dropped, and subsequent images with incorrect timestamps resulted in the craft tilting forward and backward up to 20 degrees, with large spikes in power consumption. It flew in that mode until successfully landing about 5 m (16 ft) away from the planned spot, after turning off navigation camera and flying on IMU.[25][26]
This was the first time the helicopter had to land at an airfield which was not surveyed by any means other than MRO satellite imagery.[27][28]
The landing spot was about 133.5 m (438 ft) away from the Perseverance rover. As in the previous flight, the color camera was switched off, pending a software update.[17]
Flew southwest, over Séítah, a prospective research location in Jezero crater. This flight strained the navigation system, which by design assumes flat ground; Séítah has uneven sand dunes. Controllers had Ingenuity partly compensate by flying slower over the more challenging part of the route. Landing occurred 47 m (154 ft) from the center of the 50 m (160 ft) planned ellipse.[34][5][35][36]
The helicopter flew past 10 waypoints, including takeoff and landing.[39] The general trajectory of the 10th flight was four chords of a broken oval, thus distance between the takeoff and landing points of about 95 meters.[40]
The flight positioned the craft for a route to take photographs of South Séítah.[41][42] The airfield " H " was the second after "Wright Brothers Field" in terms of the number of departures, and in terms of the total length (1069 m) and duration of these flights (481.8 s), as well as the parking time of the helicopter (3 months, from August 5 to November 6) airfield " H " even outstripped the cradle of Martian aeronautics.
The return path was about 5 m (16 ft) to the side to allow another attempt to take paired images for stereo imagery. Landing was about 25 m (82 ft) east from the takeoff point.[44] This filght was decisive for the subsequent fate of the helicopter, which then got its mission extended after August.[45] It also gave images that appeared uninteresting to the rover team, forbading to enter that region.[46]
The flight northeast and back concentrated on one particular ridgeline and outcrops in South Séítah.
14
September 18, 2021 (Sol 206)
A flight attempt at a faster rotor spin rate of 2700 rpm was automatically canceled due to a servo motor anomaly.[48] Three days earlier, September 15, Ingenuity successfully ground tested a rotor spin rate of 2800 rpm.[49] Servo motor "wiggle" tests were done on September 21 and 23 to diagnose the problem that prevented flight.[48][50] More ground tests and another flight attempt were postponed until after solar conjunction. Then, on October 21, NASA/JPL reported a successful 50 rpm ground test.[51]Ingenuity made its 14th flight three days later.
First in a series of four to seven flights on a return journey to Wright Brothers Field, due to the low atmospheric pressure and varied relief features. This leg ended in the Raised Ridges region.[54][55]
Flew halfway across South Séítah along the heading of flight 9 but in the reverse direction.[57] The helicopter lost communication with the rover during final descent, roughly 3 m (10 ft) above the grounddue to 5-meter Bras outcrop ib between, but JPL believed the flight was a success, based on available telemetry.[58] On Sol 285, Ingenuity relayed more information which suggested the helicopter was upright, based on the solar arrays charging the batteries, which could not be done if the helicopter fell sideways. JPL said local terrain and Perseverance positioning probably interrupted communication.[59]
Flew across South Séítah in the reverse of the flight 9 heading and landed near flight 9 takeoff spot. This was another in a series of flights returning Ingenuity to Wright Brothers Field. Airfield L has featureless sandy terrain, chosen for the lack of rocks for safe landing. The area is actually so devoid of rock that the helicopter sent warnings due to insufficient features for the vision navigation to track. JPL planned to update software fault protection parameters to reduce the risk of a premature landing on Flight 19.
19
Originally planned for January 5, 2022 (Sol 312); rescheduled for January 23 (Sol 330); flown on February 8, 2022 (Sol 345).
The first attempt of flight 19 was postponed due to a dust storm approaching Jezero Crater, the first time weather delayed a flight of an airborne vehicle on a celestial object other than Earth.[62] The storm reduced sunlight by 18 percent on Ingenuity's solar array, which charges its batteries, and warm dust lowered the surrounding air density by seven percent, which could have exceeded Ingenuity's ability to generate adequate lift. JPL waited over a month for the air to clear and the helicopter to regain its pre-storm power generating ability.[62][63] The storm deposited dust on the navigation camera window. To prevent navigation errors, JPL uploaded a new image mask file in late January that ignores certain regions of the image. Dust and sand also accumulated in all the swashplate assemblies. Repeated actuator self-tests and servo-wiggles cleared the debris.
The helicopter flew out of South Séítah basin, across a dividing ridge and up to the main plateau, near the landing site of Flight 8. Images taken during Flight 9 were used to select a safe zone. The flight was another in a series to return to Wright Brothers Field. This gradual approach is due to lack of large landing sites in the area and lower atmospheric density in the summer, which requires higher rotor speeds and more power. The flight plan called for the helicopter to turn nearly 180 degrees before landing to aim its color camera toward the river delta for future flights.
Ingenuity continued its journey back toward its original flight zone, landing just southwest of Wright Brothers Field. From there, it will take a shortcut to the Jezero Crater river delta, flying northwest across Séítah, while Perseverance drives around the region to the "Three Forks" a at the foot of the slopes, on the tops of which three dry channels (sleeves) of the Neretva flow.[67] The latest auto-navigation system allows Perseverance to break away from Ingenuity in a few sols, and therefore the helicopter had to go on a campaign first and in advance.[68]
Another flight on the way to a position near the base of the delta. The flight was complex, including a sharp turn to avoid a large hill. In deciding the remaining route to the delta, the mission team considered multiple factors: thermal (temperature of helicopter parts), atmospheric, flight time, navigation drift, landing site terrain, and keeping up with the rover.[note 1][73]
Fourth of five sorties crossing the Séítah region. Rotors spun at 2,537 rpm, a reduction from 2,700 rpm used since flight 14; this was a return to the slower rate of the earliest flights. Increasing air density allowed the reduction, as the thin air of the ending Martian summer was being replaced by fall's denser air. The short flight positioned Ingenuity for a long flight to approach its destination near the delta.[note 1][73] The date of flight 24 marked one year since Ingenuity's deployment to the surface from Perseverance.
Longest distance and highest speed of any flight so far. The mission team chose a route that avoided flying over hardware that was discarded and fell to the surface during the rover's entry-descent-landing (EDL) and might have caused unexpected performance from Ingenuity's laser altimeter and visual navigation system. This flight brought the helicopter out of the Séítah region.[73]
Ingenuity flew closer to the delta. This flight was the fifth in April - there has not been such an intensity of flights since the demonstration program, when 4 flights were made in April 2021.
First flight without the use of its inclinometer and in the cold of Martian winter.[81]
30
August 6, 2022 (Sol 520) and August 15, 2022 (Sol 528)[83]
One low-speed spin test of 50 rpm and one high-speed spin test of 2,573 rpm of the rotor blades to take a health check of the helicopter after it endured sandstorms and temperatures as low as −124 °F (−87 °C) during the Martian winter.
First flight after the dust season and first in more than two months. Intended to measure how accurately Ingenuity can still fly to a specified target after a long period of inactivity.
Reposition the helicopter. A small piece of foreign object debris (FOD) was seen clinging to the bottom right leg of the helicopter in footage from the navigation camera (Navcam) for a portion of this flight. It was not visible in Navcam footage from the previous flight. The debris is from the earliest frames to approximately halfway through the video, when it fell from the leg and drifted back to the Mars surface. All telemetry from the flight and a post-flight search were normal and showed no indication of vehicle damage. JPL tried to find the source of the debris.[87]
A test of its fourth software update, with advanced navigation capabilities allowing it to safely fly up the steep terrain of the Jezero river delta, scouting ahead of the Perseverance rover.[88]
First attempt of flight 38 was aborted; either due to onboard software, not transitioning to flight mode due to a short, but severe dust storm, approaching the helicopter.[89]
Throughout March, the rate of increase in atmospheric pressure was small (not faster than 1 Pa per 1 sol), and it turned out to be impossible to restore the normal operation of the engine (160-170 seconds of flight at 2500 rpm). In order to take advantage of the higher pressure factor before sunrise, on the 21st-23rd flight, the time for ingenuity to power up were moved from 12:00 to 10:00, and on the 24th to 9:30 am local time. The route of this series of flights again demanded to go to higher elevations with each flight, which further shortened their length. A new challenge for both devices was reaching the marked limits of their communication equipment (1 km - in this part the norm was exceeded by 1.3 times). All these features were taken into account in the flight plan for this series, published on March 15.[90]
