INCREDABLE INGENUITY

 DESIGN OF INGENUITY

Ingenuity, the small helicopter that accompanied NASA's Perseverance rover to Mars, was designed to make just a handful of flight tests after the duo landed in the Red Planet's Jezero Crater in February 2021. Since then, INGENUTY has far exceeded design expectations, with 28 flights under its belt. However, conditions in Jezero Crater have changed since the craft's arrival. Ingenuity took its first aircraft in mars, during springtime in the Jezero area. Now, winter temperatures, which can drop to around minus 112 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 80 degrees Celsius) at night, are impelling changes in Ingenuity's activities and software to keep the vehicle functional through the colder season. 

ROTOR - 122 cm

ENTIRE BODY - 49 cm

FUSELAGE - 13.6 cm x 19.5 cm x 16.3 cm

4 LEGS - 38.4 cm 

SPEED OF ROTOR - 2400 to 2700

FLIGHT TIME - up to 169 seconds

BATTERY CAPACITY - 35 to 40 Wh

The inclinometer is responsible for supplying Ingenuity's flight software with gravimetric data prior to takeoff. This data allows Ingenuity to determine its position relative to the downward pull of gravity of mars and enables calculations of the vehicle's roll and pitch prior to takeoff, Ingenuity chief pilot Håvard Grip of JPL explained in the status update. Without this initial data, the vehicle's software cannot determine proper orientation for Ingenuity during flight. But Grip and his colleagues think a redundancy in the helicopter's sensor array may allow them to keep Ingenuity flying. 

Delays are an inherent part of communicating with spacecraft across interplanetary distances, which means the helicopter’s flight controllers at JPL won’t be able to control the helicopter with a joystick or to look at engineering data or images from each flight until well after the flight takes place. Therefore, Ingenuity will make some of its own decisions, based on parameters set by its engineers on Earth. Ingenuity has a kind of programmable thermostat, for instance, that will keep it warm on Mars. During flight, Ingenuity will analyze sensor data and images of the terrain to ensure it stays on the flight path programmed by project engineers. 

Redundancy is the name of the game for NASA engineers, even when it comes to technology demonstrators with short life expectancies such as Ingenuity. Mission team members had envisioned a possible inclinometer failure under a number of various hypothetical scenarios, so they were ready with a software patch to address the issue well before the rover/copter duo's arrival on surface of the Mars last year.