We are now in the part of the Martian year with peak tau, combined with falling insolation. The black line is a climatological model of airborne dust density (called “tau”) over a Martian year, and the expected daily insolation (amount of Sun’s rays reaching the solar panel) illustrated in the green dotted line. Due to the seasonal decrease in available solar energy, increases in airborne dust density, and the drop in temperatures, the energy demand to keep the electronics powered and warm throughout the night has surpassed Ingenuity’s available energy budget.īelow is a plot of the environmental conditions at Jezero Crater. Starting on the evening of Sol 426, we believe Ingenuity started experiencing overnight battery brownouts (drops in the battery’s voltage), which reset the electronics. We have reached the point in Martian late fall/early winter at which Ingenuity can no longer support the energy demands of nominal operations. Each sol could be Ingenuity’s last.īelow is a summary of our anomaly investigation over the last two weeks, our elevated winter risk posture, and the possible paths ahead for Ingenuity during winter and beyond. Historically, Mars is very challenging for spacecraft (particularly solar-powered spacecraft). We are now operating far outside our original design limits. ![]() This daily SOC deficit is likely to persist for the duration of Martian winter (until September/October).Ĭhallenges like these are to be expected: After hundreds of sols and dozens of flights beyond the five flights originally planned, the solar-powered helicopter is in uncharted terrain. Telemetry from Ingenuity confirmed that the loss of communications was due to insufficient battery state-of-charge (SOC) going into the night, which resulted in a reset of our mission clock. Assuming winter recommissioning activities complete nominally, Ingenuity’s 29th flight may occur in the next few sols. ![]() Based on all available telemetry, the helicopter appears healthy, and we have resumed a modified form of operations. ![]() After a week of anomaly investigation, two sols dedicated to data collection, and the heroic efforts of the Perseverance and Ingenuity operations teams, I am very happy to report that we have reestablished reliable communications with Ingenuity. As detailed in our last blog post, for the first time in our yearlong extended mission we had a loss of communications with Ingenuity from the downlink of May 3 (Sol 427) and May 4 (Sol 428).
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