NASA is restoring its Ingenuity helicopter on Mars
A picture of "NASA" showing the creativity of the Mars helicopter during a test flight on the Red Planet (AFP)
After a period of wireless silence that extended for more than two months
After more than two months of radio silence, the US space agency “ NASA ” has reconnected with the Martian “Ingenuity” helicopter, as it acts as an aerial explorer to help a mobile robot on a mission to detect signs of ancient microbial life billions of years ago, when the Red Planet was wetter and warmer than it was. It is today.
The small rotorcraft, which began its journey to Mars with the Perseverance probe in early 2021, has held out much longer than its initial 30-day mission to prove the viability of its technology on five test flights.
Since then, the helicopter has been used dozens of times, as the 52nd flight of the “Ingenuity” helicopter was launched on April 26, but mission controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California lost contact with it during its descent to the surface after its two-minute flight. 363 meters high.
The loss of communication was expected, due to the presence of a hill between the Ingenuity helicopter and the Perseverance rover, which acts as a link between the rover and the ground.
However, Joshua Anderson, the head of the team responsible for "Ingenuity" at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said, "This was the longest period we went without hearing about Ingenuity during the mission," according to the French Press Agency.
"Ingenuity is designed to be able to act as it should when gaps in communication like this happen, but we naturally feel good when we reconnect with it," he added.
The data so far suggests that the rally is in good shape. If other test results come back positive, Ingenuity will be prepared for its next voyage, west to a rocky outcrop the Perseverance team is interested in exploring.
This is not the first time that Perseverance has encountered communication problems. The mission's chief engineer, Travis Brown, wrote in a blog post that the helicopter had been cruising around an ancient river delta when contact was lost with it for about six days in April, "an excruciatingly long time."
These "NASA" movements coincide with another mission initiated by four volunteers, which is to reside in a settlement that simulates "Mars" as part of an experiment affiliated with the agency aimed at testing the level of resilience of astronauts in dealing with isolation and other psychological stress factors, over the course of a whole year.
The Crew Health and Performance Simulation and Exploration Program mission, known as Chapaia, will see participants live and work within a 158-square-meter (1,700-square-foot) settlement at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
This mission is the first of three consecutive year-long simulation missions designed to assess the health and performance of crew members while living in isolation and using limited resources.
NASA also plans to return astronauts to the Moon within the next three years as part of the Artemis program missions, which the US space agency hopes to use as a basis for eventually sending astronauts to Mars.
The journey to Mars, which is about 480 million kilometers (300 million miles) away, is expected to take about seven months, due to the planet's orbit, which means that the opportunity to travel is only available once every 26 months. Thus, any return mission would likely take nearly four years to complete.
Source : websites