According to CNET, Mars is not friendly to solar panels. A few years ago, a violent dust storm on this dusty planet destroyed NASA's opportunity probe and challenged the insight lander. Now it has put the ingenuity helicopter in trouble The rotorcraft briefly lost contact with its companion perseverance rover, and the helicopter team believes that dust in the atmosphere may be the cause of the problem
This extraordinary aircraft has exceeded expectations and has flown 28 times since it arrived with the rover perseverance in early 2021. It communicates with the earth by using perseverance as a repeater.
Perseverance experienced a loss of communication with the rover on May 3, but re established contact on May 5. NASA JPL said in a statement on Friday that the helicopter entered a low-power state, which may be caused by the seasonal increase in dust and the decrease in temperature in the coming Martian winter.
Ingenuity relies on its solar rechargeable batteries to operate, communicate and spend cruel cold nights. It seems that the helicopter missed the scheduled Rover communication meeting because a key component called field programmable gate array (FPGA) lost power at night. The clock of the rotorcraft is reset. "Basically, when ingenuity thought it was time to contact perseverance, the rover's base station was not listening," NASA said.
Perseverance began to listen to ingenuity for a long time (thanks for the instructions from Earth) and finally re established contact. The helicopter reported that it was healthy. Thankfully, ingenuity has resumed contact, but there may be longer-term problems. "Increased (dimming) dust in the air means charging the helicopter's batteries to a level that keeps important components such as clocks and heaters powered up throughout the night, which is a major challenge," NASA said
In order to extend ingenuity's mission, the team is directing the rotorcraft to adjust the way it handles the heater to keep the battery charged at night. The idea is to increase power, even if it means exposing some fragile parts to the cold.
"Our first priority is to maintain communication with ingenuity in the next few sols, but even so, we know there will be major challenges ahead," said Teddy tzanetos, head of ingenuity team
If all goes well, ingenuity will be able to continue its reconnaissance of Martian terrain when perseverance explores a fascinating River Delta in jezro crater. Every flight of ingenuity is worth celebrating and further proves that air exploration in other worlds is possible.