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posted by janrinok on Friday May 28 2021, @03:18PM   Printer-friendly
from the Ingenuity's-Wild-Ride dept.

Flying has never been a safe or precise art. Even when it is not on Mars! Latest from the Ingenuity saga, from NASA it's own self.

On the 91st Martian day, or sol, of NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover mission, the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter performed its sixth flight. The flight was designed to expand the flight envelope and demonstrate aerial-imaging capabilities by taking stereo images of a region of interest to the west. Ingenuity was commanded to climb to an altitude of 33 feet (10 meters) before translating 492 feet (150 meters) to the southwest at a ground speed of 9 mph (4 meters per second). At that point, it was to translate 49 feet (15 meters) to the south while taking images toward the west, then fly another 164 feet (50 meters) northeast and land.

Telemetry from Flight Six shows that the first 150-meter leg of the flight went off without a hitch. But toward the end of that leg, something happened: Ingenuity began adjusting its velocity and tilting back and forth in an oscillating pattern. This behavior persisted throughout the rest of the flight. Prior to landing safely, onboard sensors indicated the rotorcraft encountered roll and pitch excursions of more than 20 degrees, large control inputs, and spikes in power consumption.

[...] Approximately 54 seconds into the flight, a glitch occurred in the pipeline of images being delivered by the navigation camera. This glitch caused a single image to be lost, but more importantly, it resulted in all later navigation images being delivered with inaccurate timestamps. From this point on, each time the navigation algorithm performed a correction based on a navigation image, it was operating on the basis of incorrect information about when the image was taken. The resulting inconsistencies significantly degraded the information used to fly the helicopter, leading to estimates being constantly "corrected" to account for phantom errors. Large oscillations ensued.

Large oscillations are better than small ones, if the truth be told. Godspeed, Ingenuity!


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  • (Score: 2, Flamebait) by TrentDavey on Friday May 28 2021, @06:44PM (9 children)

    by TrentDavey (1526) on Friday May 28 2021, @06:44PM (#1139792)

    Jesus, why don't you Americans drag yourselves in to the 21st century and adopt the metric system?
    Oh right. "You can have my feet and miles when you pry them from my cold, dead hands".

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by Runaway1956 on Friday May 28 2021, @06:56PM (3 children)

    by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 28 2021, @06:56PM (#1139796) Journal

    Actually, the metric system was 19th century, like Marxism.

    • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 28 2021, @07:12PM (2 children)

      by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 28 2021, @07:12PM (#1139804)

      And slavery, so it wasn't all bad.

      • (Score: 2) by Runaway1956 on Friday May 28 2021, @07:21PM (1 child)

        by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 28 2021, @07:21PM (#1139805) Journal

        You're about as sharp as a bowling ball, boy. Slavery has existed for thousands of years, probably tens of thousands, if not longer.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 28 2021, @10:25PM

          by Anonymous Coward on Friday May 28 2021, @10:25PM (#1139866)

          almost a wansui you might say.

  • (Score: 3, Insightful) by DannyB on Friday May 28 2021, @07:52PM (4 children)

    by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 28 2021, @07:52PM (#1139815) Journal

    why don't you Americans drag yourselves in to the 21st century and adopt the metric system?

    Just think for a second. Consider the ugly long decimal numbers such a thing would introduce into the following words of wizdumb . . .


    Before you criticize someone you should first walk a mile in their shoes.

    That way, if they get mad, they will be a mile away and barefoot.


    Before you criticize someone you should first walk 1.60934 km in their shoes.

    That way, if they get mad, they will be 1.60934 km away and barefoot.

    --
    People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 4, Touché) by Osamabobama on Friday May 28 2021, @08:51PM (2 children)

      by Osamabobama (5842) on Friday May 28 2021, @08:51PM (#1139833)

      Consider the ugly long decimal numbers such a thing would introduce...

      Let's see how bad the decimals look:

      Before you criticize someone you should first walk a kilometer in their shoes.
      That way, if they get mad, they will be a kilometer away and barefoot.

      You just need to understand that the effective range of 'someone who is mad' is generally much less than either a kilometer or a mile. The real key to the advice is the monosyllabic nature of the word 'mile.' You could use 'click,' but that's relatively obscure jargon, so it loses something.

      In any case, folksy advice sounds better if it is old fashioned, so sticking with the mile is warranted.

      --
      Appended to the end of comments you post. Max: 120 chars.
      • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 29 2021, @01:45AM

        by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 29 2021, @01:45AM (#1139901)

        Before you criticize someone you should first walk a kilometre in their shoes.
        That way, if they get mad, they will be a kilometre away and barefoot.

        FTFY.

        Plus it would look even weirder as 0.6213712 mile.

      • (Score: 2) by DannyB on Tuesday June 01 2021, @03:27PM

        by DannyB (5839) Subscriber Badge on Tuesday June 01 2021, @03:27PM (#1140755) Journal

        If they're only a kilometer away, they are more likely to catch you!

        --
        People today are educated enough to repeat what they are taught but not to question what they are taught.
    • (Score: 4, Funny) by Runaway1956 on Friday May 28 2021, @08:52PM

      by Runaway1956 (2926) Subscriber Badge on Friday May 28 2021, @08:52PM (#1139834) Journal

      The really bad part of that is, the metric shoes. Who wants to walk a mile in size 42 shoes? Everyone will look like Bozo the Clown.