Mars Ingenuit Helicopter refused to take fourth flight

Mars Nasa’s Ingenuit Helicopter has finished the milestone set by his team for it. Three goals are quite easy. First, you have to fly in Mars’s simulation space on earth. Check. Then, it must fly on Mars Real. Check. Finally, it must travel horizontally on Mars and return for a safe landing. Check! With the third helicopter flights, all of these challenges have been fulfilled, and with all four flights, ingenuity will “push the envelope,” according to NASA, and fly longer and further than before.

Apparently, the ingenuity is not on the board with the plan. NASA sent orders to a small plane on Thursday and, because the team usually did while waiting for a delay in long communication to pursue a helicopter, he was waiting for confirmation that the helicopter was launched, questioned, and landed. Unfortunately, the team received an unexpected message. The helicopter didn’t do many things and sat down all day. Uh oh.

According to NASA, data that sends ingenuity again reveals that it “does not carry out the fourth flight planned according to schedule.” But why? NASA has a pretty good idea. If you return to the first helicopter flight effort, you will remember that the plane failed to transition to flight mode from the pre-flight settings. This resulted in a helicopter just sitting there, and it seems what happened during the fourth planned flight.

NASA said that data was received from the helicopter which showed that the transition failed to flight mode and, therefore, the helicopter could not stand. The good news here is that, at least as far as NASA concerning, this strange mistake does not change anything about plans to continue to send ingenuity on new flights and bolder.

Via NASA:

The problem identified earlier this month showed a 15% chance for every time a helicopter tried to fly that it would face supervisory timer expiration and not the transition to flight mode. Today’s delay in line with that hope and does not prevent flight in the future.

NASA will hold a briefing to “discuss the next steps for the helicopter” on Friday, but plans to launch its fourth flight before. Hopefully the helicopter can bypass errors and take it to the sky. If yes, it will finish a long alternating trip while also taking photos along the way as a test of its ability to make a high-resolution “map”. The helicopter will take pictures every four legs and, knowing how many NASA likes to sew the picture together, we might see everything at the near future.