Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Aleyna Adamson
Ingenuity, a small helicopter attached to the belly of the Perseverance rover, landed on Mars in the Jezero crater on 18 February 2021. Its mission is completely independent of the rover’s mission and aims to provide purely a demonstration of technology.
With Mars being a distance of approximately 300 million km away, radio signals take many minutes to travel between the planets. This means the helicopter has to be completely autonomous. Ingenuity receives commands from Earth relayed through the rover and uses solar power to charge itself and has internal heaters to maintain operational temperatures.
Ingenuity flying on Mars as seen from the Perseverance rover. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS
autoevolution 17 May 2021, 10:15 UTC ·
by 5 photos
Just a few days ago, Okeanos Explorer, a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) ship, has embarked on a 2-week expedition of the Atlantic Ocean. Its objective, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), is to test a new underwater robot that promises to revolutionize ocean exploration.
Orpheus, the submersible robot, has something in common with the Perseverance Mars Rover and the Mars Ingenuity Helicopter: a technology developed by JPL. A version of the “
vision-based navigation” that helped map out the Martian surface is now used to get a clearer layout of the unexplored ocean floor.
In major milestone, China successfully lands Zhurong rover on Mars By William Harwood
May 14, 2021 / 9:30 PM / CBS News
China s Zhurong Mars rover, mounted atop a rocket-powered lander, dropped away from its orbiting Tianwen-1 mothership Friday and descended to touchdown on the red planet, official news agencies confirmed, a superpower feat that highlights the growing prowess of the Chinese space program.
The China National Space Administration confirmed Zhurong, named after the god of fire in Chinese mythology, landed on a broad plain known as Utopia Planitia Friday at 7:18 p.m. EDT (7:18 a.m. Saturday Beijing time) after a fiery plunge through the thin martian atmosphere.
NASA engineers have given
NASA s Mars helicopter keeps exceeding expectations: Ingenuity completed its fourth flight on Friday, traveling farther over the Martian surface than on any of its previous journeys.
NASA engineers were prepared for the 4-pound helicopter to crash, since they re pushing it to new limits with each flight. But in this case, the tiny rotorcraft soared above rocks, sand ripples, and small craters at record speed.
NASA hasn t released details of the flight yet, but the plan called for Ingenuity to climb 16 feet in the air and reach a maximum speed of 3.5 meters per second - a feat NASA engineers weren t certain it could achieve.