Washington:
NASA has delayed by at least numerous days the initially flight of its mini-helicopter on Mars right after a feasible tech problem emerged when testing its rotors, the US space agency mentioned Saturday.
Ingenuity’s trip, which is to be the initially-ever powered, controlled flight on a different planet, was set for Sunday but is now on hold till at least April 14.
A higher-speed test of the 4-pound (1.8 kilogram) helicopter’s rotors on Friday ended earlier than anticipated due to an alert of a possible problem.
“The helicopter team is reviewing telemetry to diagnose and understand the issue,” NASA mentioned in a statement. “Following that, they will reschedule the full-speed test.”
NASA noted the copter is “safe and healthy” and had sent info back to Earth.
Initially the program for Sunday was to have Ingenuity fly for 30 seconds to take a image of the Perseverance rover, which touched down on Mars on February 18 with the helicopter attached to its underside.
NASA calls the unprecedented helicopter operation hugely risky, but says it could reap invaluable information about the circumstances on Mars.
The flight is a correct challenge mainly because the air on Mars is so thin — significantly less than one % of the stress of Earth’s atmosphere.
This indicates Ingenuity ought to spin its rotor blades substantially more quickly than a helicopter requires to do on Earth in order to fly.
After the flight, Ingenuity will send Perseverance technical information on what it has performed, and that info will be transmitted back to Earth.
This will incorporate a black and white photo of the Martian surface that Ingenuity is programmed to snap when flying.
A day later, after its batteries have charged up once more, Ingenuity is to transmit a different photo — in colour, of the Martian horizon, taken with a unique camera.
If the flight is a accomplishment, NASA plans a different no more than 4 days later. It plans as lots of as 5 altogether, each and every successively more tricky, more than the course of a month.
NASA hopes to make the helicopter rise 5 meters (16 feet) and then move laterally.
The mission is be the equivalent on Mars of the initially powered flight on Earth — by the Wright brothers in 1903 in Kitty Hawk, North Carolina. A piece of fabric from that plane has been tucked inside Ingenuity in honor of that feat.
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