There is plenty of slots cut and a gap of atleased 3 or 4 millimeters all around the debris shield. I'm thinking that dust on the panel was blown in through these gaps and slots during landing. There was a significant amount of dust and small pebbles at the bottom of the shield after it was dropped, which I can only fathom being blown in during EDL.


Click to view attachment Click to view attachment

At the live Q and A today team members said the panels are getting all the power they need. No need to worry more than usual!

Nope, I'm not worried. Just pointing that out. 🙂

Here's an image taken from Ingenuity on April 3:

Click to view attachment

NASA's Mars Helicopter Survives First Cold Martian Night on Its Own

There was also dust at the bottom of the belly pan when it was dropped:

Click to view attachment

This was cropped from one of Eli's excellent posts.

There may have been dust blown into certain areas during EDL.

My only concerns would be:

1. Was the rover or helicopter damaged?
Doesn't look like it.

2. Could there be contamination of the cache system?
Unlikely, since the tubes are sealed. Besides it's still stuff from Mars.

3. Is there a better way to land a rover this size?
I don't think so.

It is time to do that when I have a chance.
Although the touch interface should work pretty well, the content is probably too heavy for most mobile devices. Chromebooks may work.
Thanks for giving this a try !

Here's that Q+A event: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PcpI8-S5ZE8

Great to see MiMi Aung again! We hadn't seen her since landing and I was beginning to worry.

Anaglyphs of Ingenuity made with Navcam pictures taken on sol 44.

Stunning watson and ZCAM images of Ingenuity down:
https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020-raw-images/p...1_000085J01.png
https://mars.nasa.gov/system/downloadable_i...-a-Close-up.jpg

Commencing pre flight check


Prepare For Take Off


M20_00046 Watson

Strange how the Mastcam-Z image is still not on the public server

It's interesting how that dust/sand is mostly on one side of the helicopter's solar panel.

I wonder if the orange cable bundle acted as a windbreak, causing the deposition on one side of the panel:

Click to view attachment

Not a big deal, the helicopter is getting more than enough power.

With MSL mastcam the policy was to delay the images 24 hours before they appear on the public "raw" site, as I recall. We were told the policy was the same with M20.

Maybe the M2020 pipeline is still suffering from set up issues. That Mastcam is one of the sol 45 images, it was released across social media and as a photojournal entry but here we are on sol 47 and it's still not in the raw image server. Hopefully they can smooth out any kinks in the pipeline to the raw image server

Some thumbnails came down showing a rotor blade movement.

Perseverance made a large move Eastward this last Sol:

Click to view attachment

It may be moving towards the Van Zyl Overlook, from where it will watch Ingenuity take flight:

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NASA/JPL have scheduled a Pre-Flight tomorrow and a "Live Broadcast: Mars Helicopter First Test Flight Results" on April 12 12:30 a.m. PDT / 3:30 a.m. EDT.

https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter/#Watch-Online

Ingenuity in a close-up anaglyph, adjusted and sharpened for convenient viewing.

MastcamZ @110mm portrait of Ingenuity. I had to focus stack two frames to avoid depth of field.

Animation of two Mastcam-Z pictures taken on sol 47. Spinning tests are beginning!

Click to view attachment

Here our anaglyph version

Looks like the rotor blades are now unlocked.

Perseverance rover is now at Van Zyl Overlook viewpoint at 30 m from Van Zyl Overlook viewpoint.
GIF made using Mastcam-Z Left and Right pictures at 110mm focal length (sol 48).


Click to view attachment

Simple GIF I assembled with 9 selected thumbnails from 60 thumbnails I found on the image server (these were the only frames that featured activity)
I believe this shows the 50 RPM rotor spin-up, I assume the next test will be the 2400RPM run, prior to the big day.
Click to view attachment

Some quick notes from today's pre-flight briefing regarding Ingenuity:

- It is getting enough energy to charge its battery, and should have enough energy for the first flight
- It will lift 4m straight up, then rotate towards the rover and take a picture (and maybe image the rover)
- The rover's ZCAM will attempt to take images and video of the helicopter in flight

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9C_IyUdKKXI

I heard 3m.

Importantly for this crowd - there was a strong commitment to keeping the flow of raw images going - and a shout out to the creations people like those in this community are making.

Yep, it was 3m. I think when she said the helicopter weighs 4 lbs, the 4 stuck in my head.

I totally agree that the image processing people make this site what it is. The panoramas they create are just jaw dropping. My image processing skills and software are crude at best, so I plan to take a break from posting. But I will be enjoying the wonderful vistas about to unfold.

Sol 49 Mastcam spin up GIF (2400RPM?) Very low res, but we can see some movement of the rotors (maybe there is motion blur at the selected shutter speed?)
Click to view attachment

Just found a very good documentation about the helicopter plans of NASA the next time on Youtube in German: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CSEiLLzh34Q

It gives a very comprehensive overview what NASA wants to do with Ingenuity the next days. It also views the flight zone for the helicopter.
The flight zone will be about 90 meters, the start zone about 10x10 meters.
It will fly about 90 seconds, and with a max height of 5 m.

I'm guessing that the results of this sol's high speed rotation test will start to arrive on earth between 11:00 pm and midnight Pacific time. Does that sound right? I was counting back ~40 minutes from the predicted time for the first flight results Sunday evening.

Edit: This post was incorrect to start with and has now been completely overtaken by events. I suggest that the mods delete it.

First flight now NET 14 Apr. Looks like a minor software glitch.

I deleted the Facebook tracking garbage in the link above. Key quote:

Looks like we will have to be patient for the test flight.

NASA Mars 2020 blog.

Based on data from the Ingenuity Mars helicopter that arrived late Friday night, NASA has chosen to reschedule the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter’s first experimental flight to no earlier than April 14.

During a high-speed spin test of the rotors on Friday, the command sequence controlling the test ended early due to a “watchdog” timer expiration. This occurred as it was trying to transition the flight computer from ‘Pre-Flight’ to ‘Flight’ mode. The helicopter is safe and healthy and communicated its full telemetry set to Earth.

The watchdog timer oversees the command sequence and alerts the system to any potential issues. It helps the system stay safe by not proceeding if an issue is observed and worked as planned.

The helicopter team is reviewing telemetry to diagnose and understand the issue. Following that, they will reschedule the full-speed test.

Does anyone have a link to the two images presented in the 09 Apr press conference? The down-looking engineering camera and the forward-facing colour image?

Not yet but they should be up soon.
Phil

We just had an update of what's going on with the software glitch they experienced during the high speed blade test. Apparently they will upload a software fix and do a full reboot and testing so the first flight date is "fluid". Here's the link for the story. https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter...-flight-on-mars

Already a a full week is gone; if the 30 days demonstration time is a hard limit before Perseverance has to continue its science mission, some later planned flights probably won't happened?

They only need one flight.

True, and and whatever time they need to do it is irreplaceable. Just hoping the "fluid" timelines get nailed down eventually.

A video taken by Mastcam-Z Left on sol 47 when the blades were unlocked. The frames arrived today, here is a GIF:
Click to view attachment

I had to squeeze the pictures definition to fit with the max upload size, full size video available here.

It seems to me both rotors are spinning in same direction - and upper one is wrong direction for lift.
I hope that is not the firmware issue! If so, would raise some fairly fundamental questions...

Both blades had to be spun in the same direction to unlock them. See this on Twitter: https://twitter.com/exploreplanets/status/1...430765095346179

Makes sense now, thanks.

There are a lot of video compression artifacts in that full size video.

Have you compared it to the original images?
https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020-raw-images/p...1_110050J01.png

While a "watchdog" timeout can mean that a tolerance was set too tight, it can also mean a hardware failure, such as a movement limit switch not being hit when it should have. Some of these errors can be worked around remotely, but others can't. We dopn't know what the exact timeout was.

https://twitter.com/NASA/status/1382399592449314816

That series of QnA explained what happened. It wasn't a hardware failure.

Those Q+A video snippets were actually very useful! Good questions, good answers. Thanks!

Blocky. Highly compressed. Not sure why - is it distance to Ingenuity?

Because it's highly compressed.

Full speed spin test went well!
https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter...flight-on-mars/