Ingenuity helicopter flies successfully after a mid-air glitch on Mars

Nasa's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter has successfully completed its 54th flight on Mars, marking a significant milestone after an unexpected interruption during its previous hop.

The helicopter performed a brief 25-second hop, providing crucial data to help the Ingenuity team understand why its 53rd flight ended prematurely.

The 53rd flight, originally planned as a 136-second scouting mission, was designed to capture images of Mars' surface for the Perseverance Mars rover science team.

The complex flight profile involved flying north for 666 feet at an altitude of 16 feet and a speed of 5.6 mph, then descending vertically to 8 feet to hover and capture images of a rocky outcrop.

However, the helicopter only completed half of its autonomous journey before a flight-contingency program was triggered, leading to an automatic landing after 74 seconds.

Teddy Tzanetos, team lead emeritus for Ingenuity at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, explained that a program called 'LAND_NOW' was included from the very first flight.

This program is designed to land the helicopter immediately if any off-nominal scenarios are encountered. During Flight 53, one such scenario occurred, triggering an immediate landing.

The Ingenuity team believes that the early landing was caused by a synchronisation issue between image frames from the helicopter’s navigation camera and data from the rotorcraft’s inertial measurement unit. This was not the first time the helicopter experienced dropped image frames during a flight.

After a similar incident during Flight 6 on May 22, 2021, the team updated the flight software to mitigate the impact of dropped images. However, the quantity of dropped navigation images during Flight 53 exceeded what the software patch could handle.

Despite the unexpected landing, Tzanetos views the incident as a valuable case study for future aircraft operating on other worlds.

The team is working to understand what occurred during Flight 53, and with the success of Flight 54, they are confident that Ingenuity is ready to continue its exploration of Mars.

Ingenuity, which began its life on Mars as a technology demonstration, has proven that flight is possible on the Red Planet. Since its first flight on April 19, 2021, it has completed numerous successful missions, demonstrating how aerial scouting could benefit future exploration of Mars and other worlds.