NASA loses contact with Ingenuity Mars helicopter
NASA loses contact with Ingenuity Mars helicopter
The dropout occurred on Thursday (Jan. 18), during Ingenuity's 72nd Red Planet flight.
The actual news of the article:
Ingenuity's handlers lost contact with the 4-pound (1.8 kilograms) chopper on Thursday (Jan. 18), toward the end of its 72nd flight on Mars.
"Data Ingenuity sent to the Perseverance rover (which acts as a relay between the helicopter and Earth) during the flight indicates it successfully climbed to its assigned maximum altitude of 40 feet (12 meters)," NASA officials wrote in an update on Friday (Jan. 19).
"During its planned descent, communications between the helicopter and rover terminated early, prior to touchdown," they added. "The Ingenuity team is analyzing available data and considering next steps to reestablish communications with the helicopter."
This is the best summary I could come up with:
"Data Ingenuity sent to the Perseverance rover (which acts as a relay between the helicopter and Earth) during the flight indicates it successfully climbed to its assigned maximum altitude of 40 feet (12 meters)," NASA officials wrote in an update on Friday (Jan. 19).
Ingenuity and Perseverance landed together in February 2021 on the floor of the 28-mile-wide (45 kilometers) Jezero Crater, which harbored a big lake and a river delta billions of years ago.
Perseverance is hunting for evidence of past Mars life and collecting samples for future return to Earth.
Ingenuity is serving as a scout for the car-sized rover, on an extended mission that NASA granted after the little chopper aced its original five-flight technology-demonstrating campaign in the spring of 2021.
"Perseverance is currently out of line-of-sight with Ingenuity, but the team could consider driving closer for a visual inspection," NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, which manages both robots' missions, said via X on Friday.
We'll have to wait and see if Ingenuity's handlers can get back in touch with the pioneering chopper, the first vehicle ever to explore the skies of a world beyond Earth.
The original article contains 327 words, the summary contains 191 words. Saved 42%. I'm a bot and I'm open source!
That second paragraph you cut out was pretty important…
Let's hope they get communications back. That little thing has been such a huge inspiration.