Ingenuity experienced a “stressful” moment on its sixth and latest flight earlier this week, according to NASA, when the drone began oscillating wildly due to an image processing glitch – before managing to land safely.
A navigation timing error sent NASA’s little Mars helicopter on a wild, lurching ride, its first major problem since it took to the Martian skies last month.
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Engineers say they did not intentionally plan such a stressful flight.
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NASA s Ingenuity helicopter, the first powered and controlled aircraft to take flight on another planet, survived a stressful navigation glitch that sent it oscillating off-course during a cosmic flight on Mars.
The chopper, which arrived on the red planet strapped to the Perseverance Rover in February, took to the air for its sixth test flight last Saturday when an anomaly occurred that led it on an unexpected flight path, engineers at NASA s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) said on Thursday.