‘ET’ Phoning Home As Ingenuity Re-establishes Link With Perseverance

At the end of last week, circa 5 May 2022, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) confirmed that the Ingenuity helicopter hopping around Mars had regained communication with the ground-bound Perseverance rover. After more than a year of operation, this was apparently the first time the communications link was broken between the two pair. We’re told the blackout was possibly due to the seasonal increase in atmospheric dust, which reduces the amount of sunlight available to power the solar array.

Its noteworthy that Ingenuity is the first powered ‘aircraft’ to operate on another planet when it arrived on Mars in April 2021. It was designed to perform five test flights over earth 31 days or 30 Martian days (sols), and thus far, has flown over 4.2 miles and been out in the field for over a year.

Perseverance operates like a relay station for Ingenuity, which makes it possible for the latter to be light and nimble while Perseverance does the heavy lifting in communicating with JPL back on earth.

The author observes that NASA often seems to set rather pessimistic operational expectations, and then watch with awe as these extortionately expensive explorers appear to defy expectations!

Regardless, teams of researchers are receiving their slices of data, and hopefully shares their learnings with the world!

FMI: https://mars.nasa.gov