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Ingenuity Helicopter Didn't Fly on Mars This Weekend, to Try Again on April 14

This Monday, we were supposed to be celebrating the first flight of a helicopter-type machine on the surface of Mars. Sadly, the world is in no position to rejoice as some error caused concern over at mission control and led to the flight's cancellation.
Ingenuity helicopter 1 photo
Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU
On Friday, April 9, NASA showed us a short video of the helicopter in the Jezero Crater, slowly spinning its blades at 50 rpm during pre-flight procedures. Engineers then went for a high-speed spin of the rotors, trying to get everything in order. It was then when something was detected as not being quite right.

According to the available info, NASA blames the test's failure on the expiration of a so-called watchdog timer. That’s the technology that oversees the command sequence and is in charge of alerting controllers and the craft itself of possible issues.

NASA does not say if this was a timer mishap or some other fault was detected during the procedure. This data was received on Friday night, and it showed the error occurred when Ingenuity was attempting to “transition the flight computer from ‘Pre-Flight’ to ‘Flight’ mode.”

Whatever that may have been all about, the reality remains the flight no longer took place as intended on April 11. The agency is now targeting April 14 for liftoff, as the available info shows Ingenuity is “safe and healthy and communicated its full telemetry set to Earth.”

Despite the delay, or maybe because of it, the test's importance did not diminish one bit. A couple of months after it landed on Mars together with Perseverance, the helicopter is about to prove flight in a less dense atmosphere and in lower gravity is possible for a machine of this kind.

If it manages to prove that, whole new avenues for the exploration of alien worlds will open.
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About the author: Daniel Patrascu
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Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive industry. He also enjoys talking about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies.
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