Mars rovers

[Doc Reeves 6434]

Pano

[Doc Reeves 6434]

sky crane crash

[smuggs 9350]

Rest in power, Sky Crane.

 

 

[thunderlounge 7812]

Went to school with a guy named Dustin. Last name? Nguyen. 
 

 

Yeah, pretty sure he heard a lot of jokes. 

[Doc Reeves 6434]

First main camera photo released 

 

 

[Doc Reeves 6434]

[Armybrat 40813]

Cross posted 

 

[thunderlounge 7812]

Sure wish the “Mars Rover” twitter account would get back into it. Was a good bit of fun to go along with the real deal. 
 

“Let’s do a science!”

[NotActuallyALonghorn 4974]

Am I the only person who thinks that such high resolution pictures of the surface of another planet is one of the greatest thing our species has achieved? I mean, screw world peace. Just give me more pictures of Mars.

[NotActuallyALonghorn 4974]

Also, I was just thinking, I'm not sure what the plural of Mars (the planet) is. I mean, we've got all these multiverse theories and junk now because of wandavision and comic books or something. And saying Marses instills the same enthusiasm that you get when you wife tells you she is going to TJ Maxx. I think we should come up with a proper plural pronunciation. Maybe something like "Marsen?"

[smuggs 9350]

Dropped the dust cover to expose the helicopter drone yesterday. We're getting closer to some Martian flight action.

 

 

 

[RPM 26315]

NASA’s Mars helicopter had a midair brain fart

NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter ended its sixth flight test on Mars earlier than planned last week after bugging out mid-flight.

Last Saturday, Ingenuity powered up and rose 33 feet from the Martian surface to travel a distance of roughly two football fields along a preprogramed flight path, all the while snapping photos of a “region of interest” on Mars during flight. As it buzzed along at about nine miles per hour toward the end of the first 150-meter leg of its journey, a glitch in the helicopter’s navigation unit caused Ingenuity to suddenly lurch midair.

It was a “stressful flight” for the little copter, Håvard Grip, the chief pilot, said. “Ingenuity began adjusting its velocity and tilting back and forth in an oscillating pattern,” rattled over what Grip said were “phantom errors” that caused “roll and pitch excursions of more than 20 degrees, large control inputs, and spikes in power consumption.”

Ingenuity’s sense of movement comes from two vital parts of its internal computer, stored in its tissue box-sized body that hangs underneath its twin-rotor system. The first part is an inertial measurement unit (IMU) that tracks how fast the rotor blades spin to calculate acceleration, which enables estimates of its speed, midair position, and location (relative to its starting point). The second instrument is a tiny, ground-facing, black-and-white camera that snaps 30 photos per second to give the helicopter a visual sense of where it is, tracking rocks and patterns on the ground as Ingenuity zips by. Those photos come with timestamps, so Ingenuity can precisely analyze movement over time.

All of that data converges in the helicopter’s navigation system to provide a sense of balance and awareness. Ingenuity’s flub occurred 54 seconds into flight when one of the black-and-white navigation images randomly disappeared, knocking the image pipeline out of order and rendering the timestamps on all subsequent images inaccurate. “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,” Grip explained.

The spoiled navigation data misled Ingenuity to believe it was making a series of flight errors, prompting harried attempts to overcorrect itself before a safety system kicked in to guide it calmly back to the ground.

[Radical Larry 28539]

[RPM 26315]

You can tell humans have arrived. Mars has litter.

[thunderlounge 7812]

Bullshit. That’s an alien emergency shelter blanket. 🤣

[miguelito 11250]

[UT_OB1 2213]

[elfenix 34221]

[atomheartbevo 89617]

My 10 year-old and I watched Good Night Oppy on Amazon Prime about Opportunity.  Room got a little dusty at the end.

If you haven’t watched it, it’s a fantastic documentary, especially if you’re into engineering and space exploration in general.

We may have our fuckups as a country, but we can do amazing shit that others can’t (and it’s telling there were more than a few international members of the rover teams who came here to do this stuff).

[thunderlounge 7812]

Saw that as a rec the other night. Sounds like it’s worth a watch. 

[Captainant 27617]

On 12/19/2022 at 10:21 PM, elfenix said:

 

I wonder if this rover will have it's Lazarus moment and wake up after high winds clear off enough of the solar panels to recharge

[Armybrat 40813]

On 12/26/2022 at 9:03 AM, Captainant said:

I wonder if this rover will have it's Lazarus moment and wake up after high winds clear off enough of the solar panels to recharge

From the Twitter comments…..

Quote

Mike Levine

 

@mrlevine

·

Dec 19, 2022

 

Replying to

@ToryMBlue

and

@NASAInSight

This is a lander, not the Perseverance rover - which is nuclear powered so dust isn’t an issue.

 

[thunderlounge 7812]

 

[atomheartbevo 89617]

Ouch.  China having problems with both its Mars rover and the orbiter.

https://spacenews.com/chinas-tianwen-1-mars-orbiter-and-rover-appear-to-be-in-trouble/

 

[Radical Larry 28539]

Hopefully they figure out the problem, but 72 flights for a drone that was initially scheduled for five flights is pretty damn impressive.

[Radical Larry 28539]

[Radical Larry 28539]

Welp, nevermind.

Damaged rotor blade is preventing further flights but comms are still active.

[Captainant 27617]

1 hour ago, Radical Larry said:

Welp, nevermind.
 

 

 

Damaged rotor blade is preventing further flights but comms are still active.

 

 

For only being designed to fly a few times, Ingenuity had one hell of a run. 

[thunderlounge 7812]

“Let’s do a science!”

[elfenix 34221]

Well, shit