Space Exploration - James Webb Telescope / Mars Rovers, etc

[Neil039]

 

[Loyal]

 

[Neil039]

Great Gamesmanship #1

 

[CGI_Ram]

If you have 3D glasses. Here is one of the flights in 3D.


View: https://youtu.be/Q75-HetU57A

 

[CGI_Ram]

Anyone know why it’s gotten a little quiet? The whole Mars perseverance page seems low of any updates, even those about the rover.

They were flying that helicopter every week. But unless I’ve missed it... they haven’t flown since May-11?

 

[Selassie I]

Anyone know why it’s gotten a little quiet? The whole Mars perseverance page seems low of any updates, even those about the rover.

They were flying that helicopter every week. But unless I’ve missed it... they haven’t flown since May-11?

They flew that fucker yesterday and experienced a glitch during the flight. It was able to land despite the glitch... but it was about 16 feet away from where it was supposed to land. They are now going to try and do some major software fixing for this problem.

 

[bluecoconuts]

They're gearing up for another flight in the next few days after a few glitches. The sun has begun her new cycle so expect increased solar storms that may impact GPS, communications and such, which all must be accounted for. Not to say that's the culprit regarding what happened with the previous glitches, but it's another variable that needs to be accounted for more now. The fights were mostly just a little testing to see what they could potentially do, while it was overall very successful, they require the rover to work in tandem, which means it cant be focused on what we actually sent the rover to do. There are some far, far, more exciting experiments and tests to do than a few short remote control helicopter flights too.

The Mars perseverance rover was able to successfully create about 10 minutes worth of oxygen on Mars by taking in some C02 from the atmosphere and breaking its bonds which is really exciting for expanding mission scope in the future. Otherwise it'll mostly be dry science, which will attract less attention from the media. Although the oxygen may get a little noise if it squeezes through all the other shit going on in the world.

 

[CGI_Ram]

NASA’s Curiosity Rover Captures Shining Clouds on Mars

The science team is studying the clouds, which arrived earlier and formed higher than expected, to learn more about the Red Planet.

www.jpl.nasa.gov

NASA’s Curiosity Rover Captures Shining Clouds on Mars​

Cloudy days are rare in the thin, dry atmosphere of Mars. Clouds are typically found at the planet’s equator in the coldest time of year, when Mars is the farthest from the Sun in its oval-shaped orbit. But one full Martian year ago – two Earth years – scientists noticed clouds forming over NASA’s Curiosity rover earlier than expected.

This year, they were ready to start documenting these “early” clouds from the moment they first appeared in late January. What resulted are images of wispy puffs filled with ice crystals that scattered light from the setting Sun, some of them shimmering with color. More than just spectacular displays, such images help scientists understand how clouds form on Mars and why these recent ones are different.

In fact, Curiosity’s team has already made one new discovery: The early-arrival clouds are actually at higher altitudes than is typical. Most Martian clouds hover no more than about 37 miles (60 kilometers) in the sky and are composed of water ice. But the clouds Curiosity has imaged are at a higher altitude, where it’s very cold, indicating that they are likely made of frozen carbon dioxide, or dry ice. Scientists look for subtle clues to establish a cloud’s altitude, and it will take more analysis to say for sure which of Curiosity’s recent images show water-ice clouds and which show dry-ice ones.

The fine, rippling structures of these clouds are easier to see with images from Curiosity’s black-and-white navigation cameras. But it’s the color images from the rover’s Mast Camera, or Mastcam, that really shine – literally. Viewed just after sunset, their ice crystals catch the fading light, causing them to appear to glow against the darkening sky. These twilight clouds, also known as “noctilucent” (Latin for “night shining”) clouds, grow brighter as they fill with crystals, then darken after the Sun’s position in the sky drops below their altitude. This is just one useful clue scientists use to determine how high they are.

Even more stunning are iridescent, or “mother of pearl” clouds. “If you see a cloud with a shimmery pastel set of colors in it, that’s because the cloud particles are all nearly identical in size,” said Mark Lemmon, an atmospheric scientist with the Space Science Institute in Boulder, Colorado. “That’s usually happening just after the clouds have formed and have all grown at the same rate.”

These clouds are among the more colorful things on the Red Planet, he added. If you were skygazing next to Curiosity, you could see the colors with the naked eye, although they’d be faint.

“I always marvel at the colors that show up: reds and greens and blues and purples,” Lemmon said. “It’s really cool to see something shining with lots of color on Mars.”

 

[Neil039]

This all so amazing. The fact that 100 years ago, it was beyond comprehension that someone would orbit the earth. Now we have technology on another planet gaining invaluable insight.

 

[CGI_Ram]

Surviving an In-Flight Anomaly: What Happened on Ingenuity’s Sixth Flight - NASA

On the 91st Martian day, or sol, of NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission, the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter performed its sixth flight.

mars.nasa.gov

Surviving an In-Flight Anomaly: What Happened on Ingenuity’s Sixth Flight​

On the 91st Martian day, or sol, of NASA’s Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission, the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter performed its sixth flight. The flight was designed to expand the flight envelope and demonstrate aerial-imaging capabilities by taking stereo images of a region of interest to the west. Ingenuity was commanded to climb to an altitude of 33 feet (10 meters) before translating 492 feet (150 meters) to the southwest at a ground speed of 9 mph (4 meters per second). At that point, it was to translate 49 feet (15 meters) to the south while taking images toward the west, then fly another 164 feet (50 meters) northeast and land.

Telemetry from Flight Six shows that the first 150-meter leg of the flight went off without a hitch. But toward the end of that leg, something happened: Ingenuity began adjusting its velocity and tilting back and forth in an oscillating pattern. This behavior persisted throughout the rest of the flight. Prior to landing safely, onboard sensors indicated the rotorcraft encountered roll and pitch excursions of more than 20 degrees, large control inputs, and spikes in power consumption.

How Ingenuity estimates motion

While airborne, Ingenuity keeps track of its motion using an onboard inertial measurement unit (IMU). The IMU measures Ingenuity’s accelerations and rotational rates. By integrating this information over time, it is possible to estimate the helicopter’s position, velocity, and attitude (where it is, how fast it is moving, and how it is oriented in space). The onboard control system reacts to the estimated motions by adjusting control inputs rapidly (at a rate of 500 times per second).

If the navigation system relied on the IMU alone, it would not be very accurate in the long run: Errors would quickly accumulate, and the helicopter would eventually lose its way. To maintain better accuracy over time, the IMU-based estimates are nominally corrected on a regular basis, and this is where Ingenuity’s navigation camera comes in. For the majority of time airborne, the downward-looking navcams takes 30 pictures a second of the Martian surface and immediately feeds them into the helicopter’s navigation system. Each time an image arrives, the navigation system’s algorithm performs a series of actions: First, it examines the timestamp that it receives together with the image in order to determine when the image was taken. Then, the algorithm makes a prediction about what the camera should have been seeing at that particular point in time, in terms of surface features that it can recognize from previous images taken moments before (typically due to color variations and protuberances like rocks and sand ripples). Finally, the algorithm looks at where those features actually appear in the image. The navigation algorithm uses the difference between the predicted and actual locations of these features to correct its estimates of position, velocity, and attitude.

Flight Six anomaly

Approximately 54 seconds into the flight, a glitch occurred in the pipeline of images being delivered by the navigation camera. This glitch caused a single image to be lost, but more importantly, it resulted in all later navigation images being delivered with inaccurate timestamps. From this point on, each time the navigation algorithm performed a correction based on a navigation image, it was operating on the basis of incorrect information about when the image was taken. The resulting inconsistencies significantly degraded the information used to fly the helicopter, leading to estimates being constantly “corrected” to account for phantom errors. Large oscillations ensued.

Surviving the anomaly

Despite encountering this anomaly, Ingenuity was able to maintain flight and land safely on the surface within approximately 16 feet (5 meters) of the intended landing location. One reason it was able to do so is the considerable effort that has gone into ensuring that the helicopter’s flight control system has ample “stability margin”: We designed Ingenuity to tolerate significant errors without becoming unstable, including errors in timing. This built-in margin was not fully needed in Ingenuity’s previous flights, because the vehicle’s behavior was in-family with our expectations, but this margin came to the rescue in Flight Six.

Another design decision also played a role in helping Ingenuity land safely. As I’ve written about before, we stop using navigation camera images during the final phase of the descent to landing to ensure smooth and continuous estimates of the helicopter motion during this critical phase. That design decision also paid off during Flight Six: Ingenuity ignored the camera images in the final moments of flight, stopped oscillating, leveled its attitude, and touched down at the speed as designed.

Looking at the bigger picture, Flight Six ended with Ingenuity safely on the ground because a number of subsystems – the rotor system, the actuators, and the power system – responded to increased demands to keep the helicopter flying. In a very real sense, Ingenuity muscled through the situation, and while the flight uncovered a timing vulnerability that will now have to be addressed, it also confirmed the robustness of the system in multiple ways.

While we did not intentionally plan such a stressful flight, NASA now has flight data probing the outer reaches of the helicopter’s performance envelope. That data will be carefully analyzed in the time ahead, expanding our reservoir of knowledge about flying helicopters on Mars.

 

[CGI_Ram]

Ingenuity Flight 7 Preview - NASA

The next flight of NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter will take place no earlier than this Sunday, June 6.

mars.nasa.gov

Ingenuity Flight 7 Preview​

The next flight of NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter will take place no earlier than this Sunday, June 6. Regardless of flight date, data will be returned to Earth over the subsequent three days.

The flight profile will send Ingenuity to a location about 350 feet (106 meters) south of its current location, where it will touch down at its new base of operations. This will mark the second time the helicopter will land at an airfield that it did not survey from the air during a previous flight. Instead, the Ingenuity team is relying on imagery collected by the HiRISE camera aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter that suggests this new base of operations is relatively flat and has few surface obstructions.

 

[CGI_Ram]

NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Completes 7th Flight

Not bad for a "demo" that was only supposed to fly a handful of times.

www.extremetech.com

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Completes 7th Flight​

The Perseverance rover will no doubt make monumental contributions to science during its mission on Mars, but the ride-along Ingenuity helicopter is stealing the show right now. NASA’s ambitious flying drone has now completed its seventh flight on the red planet, and NASA confirms the robot encountered no issues as it traveled to yet another new landing zone in Jezero Crater. Not bad for a “demo” that was only supposed to fly a handful of times.

NASA did not design Ingenuity to do science on Mars. Perseverance is bristling with advanced instruments and cameras, but Ingenuity only has a few imagers that it uses to fly around the dusty world autonomously. Because of the great distances involved, engineers on Earth cannot control the drone in real-time, and that led to a small issue during the helicopter’s sixth flight.

According to NASA, Ingenuity encountered a glitch on May 22nd as it flew almost 200 meters above the rusty dunes. The navigation camera encountered an error about a minute into that flight, causing the flow of data to the CPU to falter. When the system recovered, images were being processed with inaccurate timestamps, which caused the robot to rock back and forth dangerously as it flew. Luckily, NASA built Ingenuity’s software with generous margins for stability, and it was able to set down within five meters of its intended target.

The latest flight went off without a hitch, confirming that the previous glitch was a one-off event and not a sign of degrading hardware. Ingenuity has gone above and beyond what was expected for a piece of demo hardware, but it is built with off-the-shelf parts that are not hardened for the harsh environment on Mars. For this reason, NASA does not expect the helicopter to survive the upcoming winter.

Nevertheless, Ingenuity nailed flight number seven on June 8th. It flew 348 feet (106 meters) south from its previous location, staying in the air for 63 seconds. It is now resting in the fourth airfield it has occupied on the surface of Mars. The drone’s first five flights were part of the original demo mission, but it has since begun an extended mission that sees it tracking along with Perseverance while the rover begins its science operations. You can follow the progress of both robots on NASA’s interactive map. Ingenuity is currently about 30 meters away from Perseverance, and it will remain close for the remainder of its mission as it connects to the rover to transmit data back to Earth.

We expect Ingenuity to have at least a few more flights before it lands for the last time. However, it’s undeniably validated the idea of exploring Mars with flying robots in addition to the simpler wheeled variety. You can expect more robots zipping around the Martian skies in the future.


View: https://twitter.com/nasajpl/status/1402408813156724737?s=21



View: https://twitter.com/nasajpl/status/1402416997011394566?s=21

 

[CGI_Ram]

Mars helicopter Ingenuity nails 8th flight on the Red Planet

Ingenuity is traveling south to keep up with the Perseverance rover.

www.space.com

Mars helicopter Ingenuity nails 8th flight on the Red Planet​

NASA's experimental Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, has now flown eight times on the Red Planet, traveling farther than scientists hoped would be possible.

The little chopper made its most recent Mars sortie on Monday (June 21). During the flight, Ingenuity remained aloft for 77.4 seconds, flew 525 feet (160 meters), and landed about 440 feet (133.5 m) away from its companion, the Perseverance rover, according to a tweet from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, which operates the helicopter.

Ingenuity is a technology demonstration project that hitchhiked to Mars with NASA's much larger Perseverance rover, which touched down on the Red Planet on Feb. 18. Before beginning its science work in earnest, Perseverance began its stay on Mars by testing the helicopter and another technology project that can turn carbon dioxide from the Red Planet's thin atmosphere into oxygen.

Monday's flight came about two weeks after Ingenuity's previous flight, on June 8. The success of the new flight marks a second flawless flight for the helicopter after a difficult sixth flight that tested the chopper's resilience.

Although Ingenuity was originally designed to fly only five times, its steady successes encouraged the agency to extend its mission and experiment with more ambitious flights. Whereas the helicopter's early flights began and ended in the same place, dubbed Wright Brothers Field after pioneers of flight on Earth, Ingenuity is now soaring from one new airfield to another.

So while NASA has not yet announced when the helicopter will make a ninth flight, definitely expect such an outing to come sooner or later.

According to SpaceNews reporter Jeff Foust, the helicopter may keep exploring for months. Speaking with a group that advises NASA about Mars exploration, the project scientist of the Mars 2020 mission, which includes both Perseverance and Ingenuity, said that Ingenuity could make "a couple flights a month" for "a few more months," Foust reported.

Those sorties would see the helicopter keep pace with Perseverance's own travels on Mars to better understand how rovers and aircraft can conduct science work in tandem.

Meanwhile, Perseverance faces its own ambitious agenda, focused on evaluating the past habitability of its landing site, Jezero Crater, and stashing away intriguing rock samples for a later mission to carry to laboratories on Earth for more detailed analysis.

 

[CGI_Ram]

NASA's daring Mars helicopter conquers 'nail-biter' ninth flight over rough terrain

Ingenuity's "nerve-wracking" flight pushed the little chopper to its limits.

www.cnet.com

NASA Mars helicopter pulls off 'most nerve-wracking flight since Flight 1'​

When NASA sent the Ingenuity helicopter to Mars, it was gamble. Now it's pushing its limits, flying fast and reaching new heights. NASA announced on Monday Ingenuity successfully completed its ninth and "most challenging" flight yet.

NASA's goal was to go big with a daring "high-speed flight across unfriendly terrain" that would take the rotorcraft far from its robotic buddy, the Perseverance rover.

Instead of merely hopping ahead of the the rover, the helicopter took a shortcut over a sandy area, setting records for distance, air time and speed in the process. It hit a speed of 16 feet (5 meters) per second and flew for 166.4 seconds while snapping images of the landscape below.

The terrain below presented some new challenges for the helicopter's navigation system, which was designed to deal with fairly flat ground. Ingenuity had to make sense of "high slopes and undulations" and its team was concerned that the machine might accidentally land in a treacherous area. NASA described it as "the most nerve-wracking flight since Flight 1."

NASA's announcement Monday seems to indicate the chopper handled itself well. While the flight was risky, it made sense for what was always considered a high-risk, high-reward technology experiment.

Ingenuity has already overcome a variety of potential obstacles, from a software glitch to an in-flight anomaly.

"A successful flight would be a powerful demonstration of the capability that an aerial vehicle (and only an aerial vehicle) can bring to bear in the context of Mars exploration – traveling quickly across otherwise untraversable terrain while scouting for interesting science targets," NASA said.



View: https://twitter.com/nasajpl/status/1412092497552019458?s=21

 

[CGI_Ram]

View: https://www.instagram.com/p/CRSEsSfpFmM/?utm_medium=copy_link

 

[Loyal]

View: https://www.instagram.com/p/CRSEsSfpFmM/?utm_medium=copy_link

Martian eggs!

 

[TK42-RAM]

Martian eggs!

 

[Psycho_X]

I can't wait to see the photos when we send a drone to mars with 8k resolution flying around everywhere. Hope I'm still alive to see it.

The 10 flights of NASA's Ingenuity Mars helicopter in one chart

Ingenuity has traveled more than a mile in total. Its recent flights have taken the little drone over more treacherous terrain.

www.businessinsider.com

Exploring rough Martian terrain wasn't part of the original plan for NASA's Ingenuity helicopter.

The 4-pound chopper started out as a technology demonstration to prove that NASA could conduct a powered, controlled flight on another planet. NASA expected Ingenuity to crash on its fourth or fifth flight, but the helicopter continued to fly faster and farther than engineers thought it would.

So in May, NASA decided to extend Ingenuity's lifespan by giving it a new mission on Mars. The helicopter is now scouting and mapping the Martian landscape, snapping color images of intriguing rock outcrops and ridges that may contain signs of ancient life, and testing operations that NASA might want to conduct with future space helicopters.

It's also flying to new areas that have never been surveyed before.


Ingenuity's recent flight path has taken it farther south from its original landing site, dubbed "Wright Brothers Field." The following map shows where the helicopter has traveled during its nine flights to date.

The chart below also shows how far Ingenuity has gone in that time. Its most recent trip, flight nine, traveled the farthest distance so far: more than 2,000 feet in a single leg.

The last five flights have reached an altitude of nearly 33 feet — about 23 feet higher than Ingenuity's first flight, and 16 feet higher than its third, fourth, and fifth flights.

Flight nine also set a record for speed: Ingenuity traveled at a pace of 11 miles per hour, compared with roughly 1 mile per hour during its slowest journey in April.

All of Ingenuity's flights have taken place in Mars' Jezero Crater — a 28-mile-wide impact basin that was filled with water about 3.5 billion years ago. The helicopter traveled there in the belly of the Perseverance rover in February.

During its first flight in April, Ingenuity hovered in the same spot where it had landed two months prior.

Its next three flights tested the limits of how far it could fly: around 13 feet, 328 feet, and 873 feet, respectively. Each time, Ingenuity returned to its landing spot in Wright Brothers Field.

During its fifth flight, Ingenuity traveled 423 feet south toward a site called "Airfield B" that it had previously flown over, photographed, and mapped. That time, it didn't turn back. Since then, Ingenuity has made only one-way trips to new areas.


Flight six marked the first time that Ingenuity flew to a spot it hadn't previously surveyed: "Airfield C." The excursion required more precise maneuvering and navigation than any of Ingenuity's previous flights. Instead of zipping back and forth in one direction, the helicopter headed southwest, readjusted to move south, then switched directions and flew northeast — a 705-foot journey in total.

It was the helicopter's most precarious trip to date: About 54 seconds into the flight, a glitch caused Ingenuity's navigation system to receive incorrect information about its location. This led the helicopter to wobble in mid-air, tilting more than 20 degrees from one side to the other. Despite the hiccup, Ingenuity touched down safely within about 16 feet of its target spot.

https://i.insider.com/60b00622bee0fc0019d5a103?width=700&format=mp4

This sequence of images – taken on May 22, 2021 by Ingenuity's navigation camera — depicts the last 29 seconds of the rotorcraft’s sixth flight, when it began tilting back and forth. NASA/JPL-Caltech

The helicopter's remaining flights headed even farther south — around 348 feet during its seventh trip, and 525 during its eighth trip, which veered slightly east.

Ingenuity's ninth trip was a "nail-biter," NASA scientists said, since the helicopter had to cross over particularly treacherous terrain on its journey southwest. (Rocky or rippled land can distort Ingenuity's field of view, causing it to veer in the wrong direction.)


The helicopter ultimately touched down on its outskirts of its new landing spot, "Airfield F," on July 5. It's now stationed there, preparing for its next flight, which is scheduled for Saturday.

NASA engineers haven't said when Ingenuity's mission will end, but the helicopter could keep flying as long as it stays alive and doesn't interfere with the nearby science work of the Perseverance rover.

Ingenuity may even assist with Perseverance's search for potential fossils of ancient alien microbes. During its ninth flight, the helicopter snapped color images of "Pilot Pinnacle," a location that may carry evidence of Jezero Crater's deepest water environments.

 

[Neil039]

I'm in my late 40's so I don't think I'll see humans step foot on the RED Planet. I must be a science geek. I love reading about this. Maybe it's my time reading John Carter books or just growing up in an age where science fiction started taking off with the advent of computer graphics. I mean who didn't want a HAL 9000 to talk with on a journey?

Thank to everyone who posts on this thread. It's fantastic.

 

[bluecoconuts]

I'm in my late 40's so I don't think I'll see humans step foot on the RED Planet. I must be a science geek. I love reading about this. Maybe it's my time reading John Carter books or just growing up in an age where science fiction started taking off with the advent of computer graphics. I mean who didn't want a HAL 9000 to talk with on a journey?

Thank to everyone who posts on this thread. It's fantastic.

We could probably get there faster if we weren't wasting money and time sending dick rockets into the upper atmosphere. One of the bigger issues with getting to Mars is keeping the Astronauts healthy, and we're not sinking nearly enough time or research into that aspect. If we were motivated enough we could have been there already, but priorities just aren't there.