Further confirmation of blade loss

    • @paulhammond5155@lemmy.worldOP
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      147 months ago

      From the data that JPL got before the brownout the helicopter was only 1 meter from the ground when it all went wrong. Sadly the brownout meant no data from the IMU was saved in those last seconds before it landed. It must have experienced some pretty harsh vibrations. But it powered up again and has been communicating via the rover to Earth. It has sent back an incredible 2,396 images and a bunch of engineering data since the emergency landing (all those images are post landing) Link to the post landing images:- https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/multimedia/raw-images/?begin_sol=1036&end_sol=1136&af=HELI_NAV,HELI_RTE

      Since deployment it has sent back 14,551 images (so far) and they will stay in touch with it until the rover drives out of Jezero when radio contact will be lost. The helicopter has no off button. It will wake up every morning that its batteries etc keep working, it will wait until a preset time and it will listen for a radio call from the rover for exactly 50 minutes, if it gets no call, it will go back to sleep, and awake the next day and repeat until its no longer able.