NASA/JPL-Caltech
On its ambitious sixth flight, the Mars helicopter Ingenuity encountered an airborne navigation glitch that caused it to tilt back and forth while making unplanned velocity changes, but the small drone-like craft was still able to land safely, mission managers at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena said today.
The sixth flight of the history-making helicopter the first to perform controlled flight on another world was planned as one of its most daring excursions to date. The helicopter was programmed to travel a total of more than 700 feet, demonstrating its aerial photography skills by snapping stereo images of terrain to its west while it flew, then touch down in a new landing field.
By Bill Galluccio
May 28, 2021
The helicopter on NASA s Mars rover Perseverance had a scare during its sixth test flight. The Ingenuity helicopter ran into problems shortly after taking off when a navigation error caused it to lose control while it was 33 feet off the ground.
Officials at NASA s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said the issue occurred when a photo taken from an onboard camera failed to register in the craft s navigation system. That caused a chain reaction, as all subsequent images loaded into the system had an inaccurate time stamp. As a result, the helicopter began to tilt back and forth as much as 20 degrees because the navigation systems couldn t identify its location.
By Bill Galluccio
May 28, 2021
The helicopter on NASA s Mars rover Perseverance had a scare during its sixth test flight. The Ingenuity helicopter ran into problems shortly after taking off when a navigation error caused it to lose control while it was 33 feet off the ground.
Officials at NASA s Jet Propulsion Laboratory said the issue occurred when a photo taken from an onboard camera failed to register in the craft s navigation system. That caused a chain reaction, as all subsequent images loaded into the system had an inaccurate time stamp. As a result, the helicopter began to tilt back and forth as much as 20 degrees because the navigation systems couldn t identify its location.
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