{Disarmed} Ingenuity performs the lowest and slowest flight on Mars, thus obtaining more detailed photographs of the Martian soil
Exceeding all expectations of it, NASA's Ingenuity helicopter has made a new flight on Mars. 13 are the flights he has already made on the Martian surface and with the latter he has collected the most detailed photographs of all. Reason? It has flown over the area at a lower altitude and slower than ever.
During this weekend Ingenuity has made its 13th flight successfully . The chosen area has been South Seitah, an area with rocky outcrops that it previously flew over during its 12th flight . So why again? To better examine the area, taking pictures in the opposite direction from the one taken on the previous flight.
The idea of this is to combine the images of both flights to make a 3D mapping of the area with more topographic details. This will also help them better plan what to do in the future with the Perseverance rover and where to direct it to explore.
Slower = better details
Ingenuity has targeted a specific ridge in South Seitah . To do this, it has flown at a height of just under eight meters above the surface. To put it in context, previous missions have been ten meters high or more. This allows, in a way, to obtain higher quality photographs with the black and white navigation camera and the color camera of the little drone.
Another interesting detail is the flight time. Or, more specifically, the speed of flight. While on flight number 12 the distance was approximately 450 meters, this time the distance was only 210 meters. However, the flight time has been approximately the same, a total of 161 seconds compared to 169 seconds for flight number 12. What does this tell us? That the speed of the drone has been much lower , thus allowing it to take more specific photographs.
Since the Ingenuity began flying, it has taken a total of 72 color photographs and around 1,400 black and white photographs with the navigation cameras. It has been operating for 141 days since it made the first flight. As far as distance is concerned, it has traveled around 2.7 kilometers.
In xiaomist.com "Only with proprietary software it would have been impossible": this is how Open Source has helped in the feat of Ingenuity on MarsIngenuity was supposed to be a technology test and demo to see if a helicopter can fly on Mars. However, the little helicopter has done much more than that. It has worked 358% more than expected, it has flown 140% more than expected and it has traveled 435% more than expected. And it still seems that he has a long way to go.
Via | POT
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The news Ingenuity performs the lowest and slowest flight on Mars, thus obtaining more detailed photographs of the Martian soil, was originally published in xiaomist.com by Cristian Rus .
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