Two months ago, NASA's Ingenuity Helicopter team released a video looking back at its historic mission to Mars, which covered 10.5 miles (17.0 km) on 72 different flights over three years. According to the NASA video, this was the team's way of saying goodbye.
And this week, live science Ingenuity responded as follows in response to the report:
On April 16, Ingenuity sent its final signal to Earth, containing the remaining data stored in its memory banks and information about its final flight. Ingenuity mission scientists gathered in the control room at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California to receive the helicopter's final message over NASA's deep space network of ground stations around the world. celebrated and analyzed.
Ingenuity sent the team a farewell message containing the names of all those involved in the mission, in addition to the remaining data files. This special message had been sent to Perseverance the day before, relayed to Ingenuity, and sent home.
The helicopter still has power and will spend its remaining days collecting data from its final landing site in the Valinor Hills, named after the location featured in J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings books. Become.
The helicopter wakes up every day to test equipment, collect temperature readings, and take one photo of its surroundings. Continue doing this until power is lost or the remaining memory space is full. That could take him 20 years. Such long-term datasets could not only inform the design of future Mars rovers, but also “provide a long-term perspective on Martian weather patterns and dust movement,” the researchers said in a statement. It is stated in However, the data will be carried aboard the helicopter and not transmitted to Earth, so it will have to be retrieved by future Mars vehicles or astronauts.
“Whenever humans return to the Valinor Hills with probes, new aircraft, or future astronauts, Ingenuity will be our final gift,” Teddy Tzannetos, an Ingenuity scientist at JPL, said in a statement. They will be waiting with some data.”
On Thursday, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory released another new video tracing the entire route of Ingenuity's expedition on the surface of Mars.
“Ingenuity's success could pave the way for larger-scale aerial exploration of Mars in the future,” he added. spacee.com:
Mission team members are already working on a larger, more capable rotorcraft that could collect a variety of scientific data on Mars, for example. And Mars isn't the only target for drones. In 2028, NASA plans to launch Dragonfly, a $3.3 billion mission to Saturn's giant moon Titan. Titan's frigid surface is home to liquid hydrocarbon lakes, oceans, and rivers. The 1,000-pound (450 kg) dragonfly will fly from spot to spot on Titan, characterizing the moon's various environments and assessing their habitability.
