NASA engineers took their Mars Ingenuity helicopter on an 18-second flight – literally up and down – to test a new hazard avoidance camera and technical altitude map feature. number.
Flight 34 is the first time NASA has tested new software, which will help the vehicle avoid damage during future landings following Red Planet tours.
“Despite the simple nature of the flight, the team is excited about what it means for Ingenuity’s future,” NASA said.
Ingenuity wasn’t built for the rough and uneven terrain of Mars but for neat surfaces like the Wright Brothers’ Field – the large, flat, and rock-free Martian site that NASA has built chosen as Ingenuity’s Mars aerodrome. NASA appropriately named the airport after American aviation pioneers, the Wright brothers, after Ingenuity’s First flight on Mars last year.
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The newly installed software update will help Ingenuity handle less favorable landing conditions as it continues to explore the rocky Jezero Crater. The two key features of the update are hazard avoidance when landing and digital elevation maps for navigation.
“Jezero Crater is a rocky place, so it’s hard to find a safe airport! Using Ingenuity’s downward navigation camera, this software update adds the ability to avoid danger when landing,” explain Joshua Anderson, Ingenious Mars Helicopter Operations Team Leader at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The digital elevation map update is really important for Ingenuity because it corrects the assumption that it is flying over flat surfaces. Elevation maps will also allow NASA to choose from a range of small airports rather than being forced to find the rarer major airports.
“While in flight, Ingenuity will determine the safest possible landing location. When preparing to land, Ingenuity will redirect to this selected location. This ability allows Ingenuity to land safely at that location. rougher shape than before, giving our pilots more potential landings than sites,” Anderson noted.
The maps correct a false assumption that NASA made when designing the helicopter’s navigation system. As Anderson explains, Ingenuity’s navigation software is designed to “assume it’s flying over flat terrain,” so when it flies over hills, the navigation software assumes the vehicle is turning, this causes it to actually redirect to fix the error.
“During long flights, navigation errors due to rough terrain must be taken into account, requiring the team to select major airports,” Anderson notes.
“This new software update corrects this flat ground assumption by using a digital elevation map of Jezero Crater to help navigation software distinguish between changes in terrain and motion. This increases Ingenuity’s accuracy, allowing pilots to target smaller airports in the future.”
