NASA’s small helicopter Ingenuity lost contact with the mission control team for 6 days at the beginning of April, as shared by chief engineer Travis Brown on May 26.
Since January of this year, as winter set in at Ingenuity’s operational area at the Jezero Crater on Mars, the solar-powered helicopter has been intermittently operating in a night survival mode (having enough energy to avoid power depletion overnight). This has made it difficult for engineers to determine Ingenuity’s daily wake-up time, complicating communication with the helicopter and planning its operations.
Image of the Martian surface taken by the Ingenuity helicopter on April 22. (Photo: NASA).
Additionally, during this period, a rock obstructed the signal transmission between Ingenuity and the Perseverance rover, which is responsible for sending commands to the 1.8 kg helicopter. However, when the rover collected samples and searched for signs of life, Perseverance returned to communication range, yet engineers still could not locate the helicopter, leading to a tense situation, according to Brown, an engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California.
“Poor telecommunications performance could be a plausible explanation, but there are many other questionable reasons. In more than 700 days of operating the helicopter on Mars, we have never faced a complete loss of radio signal. Even in the worst communication environments, we have always detected some signs of activity,” Brown said.
A day on Mars is slightly longer than a day on Earth, lasting about 24 hours and 40 minutes. The communication loss with Ingenuity began on April 5 (Mars Sol 755) and ended on Mars Sol 761, when the mission team detected a signal during the helicopter’s expected wake-up time. A second signal was received at the same time on Mars Sol 762, confirming that the helicopter was still operational.
Ingenuity conducted its 50th flight on Mars Sol 763 (April 13), reaching an altitude of 18 meters. The vehicle flew again on April 22 but has remained on the ground since then. Summer will soon return to the Jezero Crater, but communication issues may persist despite seasonal changes due to a significant amount of dust on Ingenuity’s solar panels. Consequently, the helicopter has been in a “power transition state” for some time, meaning engineers cannot undertake many risky operations with it.
