Hide and Seek [re: Perseverance and Ingenuity on Mars]

NASA ^ | May 26, 2023 | Travis Brown

[Ezekiel]

Even before the end of Ingenuity’s primary mission as a technology demonstrator, the helicopter showed that it could provide tactical and scientific scouting for the Perseverance mission. In practice, this hasn’t always been possible, but Ingenuity has indeed proven its worth on more than a few occasions over the course of the mission. As mentioned in a previous post, the team was looking forward to doing this yet again as the rover made the long ascent up the Jezero delta.

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Since the first post-winter overnight “survival” on Sol 685, the helicopter had unfortunately been drifting in and out of nighttime survival mode (having enough power to avoid overnight brownouts). As discussed in a previous post, overnight brownouts lead to uncertainty in Ingenuity’s wakeup time, which make planning much harder. The new transitional power state made morning wakeup times even more difficult to predict, with large fluctuations as the helicopter’s power state neared its overnight survival threshold.

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Finally, on Sol 761, nearly a week after our first missed check-in, our communications team observed a single, lonely radio ACK (radio acknowledgement) at 9:44 LMST (Local Mean Solar Time), exactly the time when we’d expect to see the helicopter wakeup. Another single ACK at the same time on Sol 762 confirmed that the helicopter was indeed alive, which came as a welcome relief for the team.

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Despite the imminent return of Martian summer, it now appears that the dust covering our solar panel will ensure that Ingenuity will likely remain in this transitional power state for some time. This means that, much to the chagrin of her team, we are not yet done playing this high-stakes game of hide and seek with the playful little helicopter.

[Ezekiel]

It's a really long article, detailing the communications issues as they've developed, much having to do with the challenges on account of the topography.

So we must wait...

[Ezekiel]

Here’s an update from the rover’s blog.

Perseverance required!

“Have a little faith, Baby. Have a little faith.” ~ Oddball

[JeanLM]

One of the things ignored in looking at the Martian atmosphere is the total lack of global warming, in spite of the fact that the atmosphere,though thin, is still thick enough to fly a helicopter in. Mar’s atmosphere is composed of 93% CO2, and there is in total ten times as much CO2 on Mars as we have on earth...absolute amount, not percentage. And no fossils or humans had anything to do with its presence.

If you were to model CO2 warming, you couldn’t pick a better place than Mars.

[Ezekiel]

Heh, don’t give them any ideas.

Of course there’s no global warming on Mars — there are no humans to cause it.

No cash cows on Mars.