I can't believe it's standing upright after that.
this post was submitted on 27 Feb 2024
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NASA's Perseverance Mars Rover
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On the plains of Jezero, the secrets of Mars' past await us! Follow for the latest news, updates, pretty pics, and community discussion on NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's most ambitious mission to Mars!
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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.
How much ground did Perseverance have to cover to get to Ingenuity? I thought the drone was always far ahead of the rover, which moves at a turtle's pace at best.
Flight 72 was during Sol 1036. During Sol 1036 the rover was stationed at site 49.370 (E 4348233.930, N1096134.251) the point to point distance to where it is now is 693.85 meters (2276.41 ft).
However the traverse to reach the current location contained a few loops and science waypoints, so the total drive distance was 1,117.31 meters (3665.7 ft).
The point to point distance between the rover and the helicopter at this time is 416.55 meters (1366.62 ft)