Mars Helicopter Sol 133– Color Camera: NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter got this image throughout its 9th flight. Flight 17 will zip this surface once again and land near the upper right corner of the image. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
With Flight 17, Ingenuity continues its journey back to Wright Brothers Field at the Octavia E. Butler landing website. Flight 17 is the 3rd flight of this journey and is set up to occur no earlier than Sunday, December 5 with the information getting here back on Earth no earlier than later on that exact same day.
Flight 17 is roughly half of Flight 9 in reverse, which was among the most difficult flights for Ingenuity to date. The crossing of the “Séítah” area of Mars‘ Jezero Crater will take a minimum of 2 flights, with a stop midway throughout. This stop is needed for 2 factors. Ingenuity’s decreased flight time, since of greater rotor RPMs, suggests that Ingenuity would require to fly faster to cover the exact same range. Flying much faster increases the navigation unpredictability developed throughout a flight, which suggests bigger landing ellipses are needed. By flying slower, Ingenuity can much better target a landing website in South Séítah.
The 2nd factor is that the surface on the eastern side of South Séítah is more harmful than the western side. During flight 9, we understood Ingenuity would have a bigger unpredictability in the landing area, however that was appropriate because the location was fairly benign. This is not the case this time around. With 2 flights, Ingenuity can much better target safe landing websites on the eastern side of Séítah, without extreme danger on landing.
During Flight 17, Ingenuity is anticipated to fly 187 meters at an elevation of 10 meters and be air-borne for 117 seconds.
Written by Gerik Kubiak, Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Flight Software Lead at NASA‘s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
