Hey everyone welcome to 2021!
Last year we saw a great number of crazy things going on when it comes to space. Yeah I know the world ended and everything but that’s but that’s not as important as what I want to talk about. What I do want to talk about is the upcoming Perseverance Rover Landing more specifically its passenger Ingenuity.
Ingenuity is going to be the first helicopter to have left this planet and fly on another planet (that is just crazy if you really think about it). Ingenuity is basically a dual rotor autonomous drone that is demo tech. The primary mission for this little guy is to see if it will actually fly. I’m sure they have a whole laundry list of secondary missions if this thing gets off the ground and then lands safely however I have not seen that list published anywhere if you have let me know.
To understand how crazy difficult Ingenuity’s task is you have to just look at helicopters and drones here on Earth. I have actually had the pleasure of learning to fly a helicopter and I can tell you that you have to fight the thing every second to keep the thing airborne more or less than actually do something with it. They have designed it with that in mind by giving it dual main rotors and no rear torque rotor maintaining stability by having the main rotors turn in opposite directions. Doing this removes the requirement for the anti-torque rotor as with one main turning clockwise and the other counter clockwise you remove the natural tenancy for the aircraft to want to rotate in the same direction as the main rotor (if you only had one). Here is another challenge this helicopter has to operate autonomously and you might say well we have drones here that have all kinds of sensors built into them to keep them from running into things and crashing. You are correct we can go to the store purchase a drone that has all the anti-collision and proximity sensors even drones that will follow you through trees and find its own path and not crash. However, the one thing here on Earth that drones have an advantage of that Ingenuity will not is GPS. Currently in the world of drones here on Earth they rely heavily on GPS to do simple tasks like stay in one place or return home and land in the same spot they took off from. Without GPS drones tend to drift on the wind here on Earth if you lose your GPS signal alarms go off and you enter into what is called ATTI mode (Altitude mode) in which the drone operator has to watch the drone like a hawk because it will start to drift and to maintain a hover it is actually like flying a helicopter and you have to fight it every step of the way. So there are some really unique challenges with trying this but if they pull it off it will open so many exploration doors for us and make exploring Mars that much easier.
Some fun facts about Ingenuity
Its about a foot and a half tall
However its rotors are 4 feet long!
Solar Powered
And uses WiFi to talk to Perseverance and receive orders from the rover.
Has 2 cameras on it.
Perseverance will be Landing on Mars February 18th 2021 @ 3:34 P.M. Eastern time
Let me know your thoughts on what you think what I got wrong what I missed or just let me know if you think this thing will actually be successful
Alright everyone I finally had time to sit down and download all the raw photos from Ingenuities flight #20. I did 4 renders one at 24 frames/sec then 1/2, 1/4 and 1/8 speed. Personally I am torn between the 1/4 and 1/8 being my favorite so I am going to post the 1/8 here and put the others in a folder in the content area. Flight 20 occurred on Feb 25th or SOL 362 of the Perseverance mission
Enjoy!
Just so you know I am super new to this just started doing this earlier this year. For me here in the PNW it has FINALLY stopped raining and its supposed to be clear for today and all hollows eve tomorrow so it’s a recipe for some great Astrophotography! I will attach a time-lapse that I did in early September and if conditions hold out then I will try to get the galaxy center tonight or tomorrow. If it works out I will share with you all. Have a wonderful holiday weekend! In the mean time here is a little something for you.
So, as it turns out apparently Perseverance has an autopilot feature or as NASA calls it Autonav. Now I am not talking about autopilot as in it flew itself to Mars and even landed all on its own (which by the way I could watch that over and over again and it never gets old) it can actually drive and navigate all on its own as well. Just like a sexy tesla you give it a destination and it uses it’s nav cameras and figures out a way to get there. Now granted Perseverance drives slow so it doesn’t need to perform lightning speed calculations in fact I’m pretty sure your old flip phone has sufficient if not more computing power than what is needed for Perseverance’s Autonav.
Fun Fact: This is not the first iteration of Autonav Curiosity actually has an older version of this capability (something I never knew) however Perseverance’s version allows it to drive about 5 times faster. Whatever 5 x Slow =
...
One of the coolest things I think NASA has done to date was to stick microphones on Perseverance. I want to buy the scientists a beer that had the wherewithal to go "You know what wonder what shit sounds like on Mars". Well as it turns out Mr. Scientists surprisingly enough not how you would think. Now in some cases it does sound "normal" but Ingenuity didn't sound anything like I thought it would and I'm a drone pilot! Now NASA has altered this audio to enhance the sound over the wind and stuff, however you are going to have to listed twice because what you think is background noise is actually Ingenuity but you don't know that until it winds down at the end.
Have a listen!
Starship Launch has been Delayed until Saturday. Will have the feeds up when they are available.
Ok I know it has been about a year and a lot has happened. But hey Starship launching?? Looks like it could be this Friday... If so I will have all the streams I can find up here and listed so you can check them out.
Enjoy!
