NASA’s Mars Helicopter Re-Establishes Contact After 63 Days
NASA announced on Friday that it has successfully regained communication with the resilient Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, ending a period of over two months of radio silence.
At the beginning of 2021, the mini-rotor plane that was aboard the Red Planet with the Perseverance rover has already survived its initial 30-day mission to prove the feasibility of its technology with five test flights.
Since then, it has been used dozens of times, acting as an aerial scout to help its wheeled companion look for signs of ancient microbial life billions of years ago, when Mars was much wetter and warmer than it is today.
Ingenuity’s 52nd flight took off on April 26, but controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California lost contact when it touched down after its two-minute, 363-meter jump.
The loss of communication was to be expected, as a hill stood between Ingenuity and Perseverance, acting as an intermediary between the drone and the ground.
Even so, “this has been the longest we’ve gone without hearing from Ingenuity on a mission so far,” JPL’s Ingenuity team leader Joshua Anderson told AFP.
“Genius is designed to take care of itself when such communication lapses occur, but we were all still relieved when we finally heard.”
The information received so far shows that Heli is in good condition. If other health checks also come back normal, Ingenuity will be ready for the next flight, west towards a rocky outcrop that the Perseverance team is interested in exploring.
This is not the first time Ingenuity has experienced a communication breakdown. Heli was exploring the ancient river delta when it disappeared for about six days in April, “a painfully long time,” chief engineer Travis Brown wrote in a blog post.
