NASA Reestablishes Contact With Ingenuity Mars Helicopter After an Unexpected Outage

NASA breathed a sigh of relief after it reestablished contact with the Ingenuity Mars helicopter with the help of Perseverance. The U.S. space agency needed help to contact the drone during its 72nd flight on Thursday.

NASA Reconnects With Ingenuity Mars Helicopter

After an unexpected outage that raised concerns that the devoted vehicle had finally reached the end of its useful life, NASA announced on Saturday that it had reestablished contact with its miniature helicopter on Mars, Ingenuity.

In 2021, the rover Perseverance brought Ingenuity, a drone of roughly 1.6 feet (0.5 meters) in height, to Mars, where it made history as the first motorized vehicle to fly independently on a different planet.

During a test flight on Thursday, the 72nd lift-off of Ingenuity on Mars, communications were unexpectedly severed. The data from the helicopter is transferred back to Earth via Perseverance.

NASA couldn't figure out where the helicopter was for nearly two days. The agency previously announced that it would send the rover to the area where the helicopter was last seen for a visual inspection. Perseverance was indeed helpful in tracing the drone.

"Good news today: We've reestablished contact with the #MarsHelicopter after instructing @NASAPersevere to perform long-duration listening sessions for Ingenuity's signal," the team announced on X, former Twitter. "The team is reviewing the new data to better understand the unexpected comms dropout during Flight 72."

The said flight was described as a "quick pop-up vertical flight to check out the helicopter's systems, following an unplanned early landing during its previous flight," during which Ingenuity reached a height of 40 feet (12 meters).

However, the lander and drone communications terminated unexpectedly before the touchdown. According to the team, Ingenuity was "out of line-of-sight" with Perseverance. Nevertheless, they hoped the drone would be found using the rover.

When asked if Ingenuity can take off again in a post on X, JPL responded on Saturday that "the team needs to assess the new data before that can be determined."

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History of NASA Losing Contact With Ingenuity

The incident of NASA losing contact with the helicopter on Mars has happened multiple times. On Flight 50, the team encountered a similar problem when they could not hear the helicopter for a considerable time. They lost communication with the chopper on Sol 755. Still, they weren't worried because Ingenuity had already shown that it could survive occasionally going into and out of nocturnal survival mode.

When the over showed up on its way to Foel Drygarn, the team started to worry, and the helicopter disappeared. As they searched for it, matters deteriorated when they had a total radio blackout during the helicopter's operation for the first time in over 700 sols.

Even in the worst communication conditions, NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Chief Engineer of Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, Travis Brown, claims they continue to receive some indicators.

Travis Brown, Chief Engineer of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, states that they continue to receive some indications of activity from the helicopter even under the worst communication conditions, so when they didn't receive any signals from Ingenuity for six sols, they were quite concerned.

NASA also lost contact with the rover for two months last year.

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