Space - Havarietterforsking i gang for Ingenuity havariet på Mars - AVweb

 

NASA’s Interplanetary Accident Probe

Arriving at probable cause from 100 million miles away.

 

Mark Phelps

Updated Dec 11, 2024 7:11 PM EST

 

Credit: NASA – JPL/Caltech

But there is far more good than bad in assessing the cause of the mishap. Ingenuity was originally designed as a technology demonstration, expected to complete five test flights over 30 days. After close to three years, the unique helicopter launched on its 72^nd flight on January 18, 2024. According to NASA, “The investigation concludes that the inability of Ingenuity’s navigation system to provide accurate data during the flight likely caused a chain of events that ended the mission.”

The flight was planned as a vertical “hop” to check the Mars helicopter’s flight systems and take more photographs of the surface of the red planet. It climbed to 40 feet above the surface, hovered, and captured some images. They it began a 19-second descent, which resulted in “halted communications.”

Ingenuity’s first pilot, Håvard Grip, said, “When running an accident investigation from 100 million miles away, you don’t have any black boxes or eyewitnesses. While multiple scenarios are viable with the available data, we have one we believe is most likely: Lack of surface texture gave the navigation system too little information to work with.”

In all, Ingenuity flew more than two hours of actual flight time on Mars, covering 30 times the distance NASA hoped it would. A black-and-white photo from the aircraft’s navigation camera confirmed rotor damage had occurred during Flight 72.