(NASA/JPL)
The famous Marscopter Ingenuity made its fourteenth flight, thus confirming that the swashplate problem had been resolved.
During the flight, the propellers were spun more than before, which means the drone is capable of flying in a lower atmospheric density.
For seven months of work on Mars, Ingenuity made 14 flights, although initially only 5 were planned.
The drone showed high survivability, not only overcoming difficult routes, but also successfully coping with major disruptions in its work
Thanks to its resilience, at first, its scientific program was expanded and then extended indefinitely.
Because of the decrease in the density of the atmosphere of Mars due to the change of seasons in September of this year, the drone team decided to increase the rotational speed of the propellers during the fourteenth flight
However, that did not take place, because there were problems with the swashplate.
The engineers did not manage to solve the problem before the onset of the upper conjunction of the Sun and Mars, which disrupts communication, so they postponed the flight indefinitely.
On October 19, 2021, the Perseverance rover and Ingenuity re-established communication with the Earth, after which the drone successfully completed a test spinning of the propellers up to 50 rpm.
The fourteenth flight itself took place on October 23 and was a jump five meters up, during which the propellers were spun up to higher revs than usual.
After that, the drone landed 2.75 meters from the starting point.
Thus, engineers have confirmed the ability of the helicopter to fly at a lower atmospheric density on the Red Planet.
Sources:
- NASA’s Twitter: https://twitter.com/NASAJPL/status/1452676656846426112