The Ingenuity drone restored contact with the Earth after a blackout

in hive-109160 •  3 years ago 

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(NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/MSSS)

The marscopter Ingenuity made contact with its base on Earth after a recent failure in the control system, caused by the lack of battery power.

The NASA engineers decided to temporarily turn off the drone's heaters at night in order to prevent such failures from recurring in the future

The famous martian drone made its first flight in mid-April last year and became the first aerial vehicle to operate in the Martian atmosphere.

Ingenuity was designed to perform five experimental flights within one month, but has since made 28 flights, flying more than 6.9 kilometers.

The marscopter has also demonstrated high survivability in the harsh conditions of Mars, having survived a number of failures.

Then on May 3 the drone missed a scheduled communication session with the Perseverance rover for the first time.

The rover plays the role of a base station that allows data and commands to be exchanged with the Earth.

Finally, on the morning of May 5, communication was restored. The team found out the nature of the failure, which fortunately did not cause significant harm to the vehicle.

Te reasons
The team concluded that the main cause of the failure was the low power mode associated with the dustiness of the solar panel and the onset of the Martian winter.

The drone found it increasingly difficult to recharge its six lithium-ion batteries, and one night the battery charge dropped below its limit

All of these problems caused Ingenuity's field-programmable gate array (FPGA) to shut down.

This caused the onboard clock to reset and the heaters to turn off.

When the drone's solar array eventually began charging the batteries again the next morning, the onboard clock was out of sync with the Perseverance clock.

That’s why the marscopter missed the communication session, reaching the connection even when the rover was not in signal reception mode.

After the failure, the engineers sent a series of prevention commands to the drone, which should eliminate similar situations in the future.

Ingenuity will now turn on the heaters at -40 degrees Celsius and then turn them off to save battery power at night.

This action will cause the electronics to be exposed to low temperatures, but the engineers see no other way out.

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#space #science #mars #ingenuity #learnwithsteem #news

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