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NASA to 'wiggle' broken Ingenuity Mars helicopter's blades to analyze damage

"We couldn't be prouder or happier with how our little baby has done."
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"NASA and JPL still aren't sure what caused the damage to Ingenuity's blades; it remains unclear whether the helicopter's power dipped during landing, causing unwanted ground contact, or if it accidentally struck the ground to cause a "brownout."

That was my first thought when I heard the blades were damaged. The blades have to spin ridiculously fast due to the thin atmosphere so any contact with a solid surface would likely be catastrophic for them.
Whatever the findings, it can only bode well for future copter-themed missions.
 
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Sad news about Voyager 1.

Humanity’s most distant space probe jeopardized by computer glitch​

"It would be the biggest miracle if we get it back. We certainly haven't given up."​

An annotated image showing the various parts and instruments of NASA's Voyager spacecraft design.

An annotated image showing the various parts and instruments of NASA's Voyager spacecraft design.

Voyager 1 is still alive out there, barreling into the cosmos more than 15 billion miles away. However, a computer problem has kept the mission's loyal support team in Southern California from knowing much more about the status of one of NASA's longest-lived spacecraft.
The computer glitch cropped up on November 14, and it affected Voyager 1's ability to send back telemetry data, such as measurements from the spacecraft's science instruments or basic engineering information about how the probe was doing. So, there's no insight into key parameters regarding the craft's propulsion, power, or control systems.
"It would be the biggest miracle if we get it back. We certainly haven't given up," said Suzanne Dodd, Voyager project manager at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, in an interview with Ars. "There are other things we can try. But this is, by far, the most serious since I’ve been project manager."
 

Building robots for “Zero Mass” space exploration​

Ultra-lightweight building blocks can be assembled by simple robots.​

A robot performing construction on the surface of the moon against the black backdrop of space.

Sending 1 kilogram to Mars will set you back roughly $2.4 million, judging by the cost of the Perseverance mission. If you want to pack up supplies and gear for every conceivable contingency, you’re going to need a lot of those kilograms.
But what if you skipped almost all that weight and only took a do-it-all Swiss Army knife instead? That’s exactly what scientists at NASA Ames Research Center and Stanford University are testing with robots, algorithms, and highly advanced building materials.

Zero mass exploration​

“The concept of zero mass exploration is rooted in self-replicating machines, an engineering concept John von Neumann conceived in the 1940s”, says Kenneth C. Cheung, a NASA Ames researcher. He was involved in the new study published recently in Science Robotics covering self-reprogrammable metamaterials—materials that do not exist in nature and have the ability to change their configuration on their own. “It’s the idea that an engineering system can not only replicate, but sustain itself in the environment,” he adds.
 

A little US company makes history by landing on the Moon​

“We’re not dead yet."​

Odysseus passes over the near side of the Moon following lunar orbit insertion on February 21.


For the first time in more than half a century, a US-built spacecraft has made a soft landing on the Moon.
There was high drama and plenty of intrigue on Thursday evening as Intuitive Machines attempted to land its Odysseus spacecraft in a small crater not all that far from the south pole of the Moon. About 20 minutes after touchdown, NASA declared success, but some questions remained about the health of the lander and its orientation. Why? Because while Odysseus was phoning home, its signal was weak.
But after what the spacecraft and its developer, Houston-based Intuitive Machines, went through earlier on Thursday, it was a miracle that Odysseus made it at all.
 
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Final images of Ingenuity reveal an entire blade broke off the helicopter​

This new data should help us understand Ingenuity's final moments on Mars.​

An image of <em>Ingenuity</em> captured by <em>Perseverance</em>'s SuperCam RMI instrument.

Enlarge / An image of Ingenuity captured by Perseverance's SuperCam RMI instrument.

It has now been several weeks since NASA's tenacious helicopter on Mars, Ingenuity, made its final flight above the red planet.
This happened last month. On January 6, Ingenuity flew 40 feet (12 meters) skyward but then made an unplanned early landing after just 35 seconds. Twelve days later, operators intended to troubleshoot the vehicle with a quick up-and-down test. Data from the vehicle indicated that it ascended to 40 feet again during this test, but then communications were ominously lost at the end of the flight.
On January 20, NASA reestablished communications with the helicopter, but the space agency declared an end to its flying days after an image of the vehicle's shadow showed that at least one of its blades had sustained minor damage. This capped an end to a remarkable mission during which Ingenuity exceeded all expectations.
During a news conference to discuss the end of the mission, NASA officials said they may never know exactly what happened during Ingenuity's final two ultimately fatal flights. But thanks to Perseverance, the rover that brought Ingenuity to the Martian surface and helped relay communications back to Earth, engineers picked up a powerful clue this past weekend.
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Finding a missing blade​

The rover is now moving away from the helicopter and bound for other scientifically interesting vistas. After recently getting to within about 1,500 feet (450 meters) of Ingenuity, Perseverance likely will never be as close again. However, as it was moving away, the rover turned its SuperCam Remote Micro-Imager toward the helicopter for the final time. Those images, captured this weekend, were sent back to Earth on Sunday. A German design student, Simeon Schmauß, processed some of these images to form a mosaic showing the helicopter and its surroundings in Neretva Vallis, an ancient channel through which water once flowed.
A broken blade in an ancient channel on Mars.
A broken blade in an ancient channel on Mars.

The new images are remarkable in that they reveal Ingenuity more clearly than before and show that one rotor blade was completely broken off. Additional sleuthing revealed that this blade lay about 15 meters away from Ingenuity on the red Martian sands, apparently winging away from the helicopter prior to or during a landing of the vehicle on its final flight last month.
This additional data will undoubtedly help the engineers and scientists who flew the helicopter to piece together its final moments—and quite possibly make the design of future flying vehicles on Mars and other worlds more robust.
 

Finally, engineers have a clue that could help them save Voyager 1​

A new signal from humanity's most distant spacecraft could be the key to restoring it.​

Artist's illustration of the Voyager 1 spacecraft.


It's been four months since NASA's Voyager 1 spacecraft sent an intelligible signal back to Earth, and the problem has puzzled engineers tasked with supervising the probe exploring interstellar space.
But there's a renewed optimism among the Voyager ground team based at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. On March 1, engineers sent a command up to Voyager 1—more than 15 billion miles (24 billion kilometers) away from Earth—to "gently prompt" one of the spacecraft's computers to try different sequences in its software package. This was the latest step in NASA's long-distance troubleshooting to try to isolate the cause of the problem preventing Voyager 1 from transmitting coherent telemetry data.
 

Space Force is planning what could be the first military exercise in orbit​

Artist's illustration of two satellites performing rendezvous and proximity operations in low-Earth orbit.


The US Space Force announced Thursday it is partnering with two companies, Rocket Lab and True Anomaly, for a first-of-its-kind mission to demonstrate how the military might counter "on-orbit aggression."
On this mission, a spacecraft built and launched by Rocket Lab will chase down another satellite made by True Anomaly, a Colorado-based startup. "The vendors will exercise a realistic threat response scenario in an on-orbit space domain awareness demonstration called Victus Haze," the Space Force's Space Systems Command said in a statement.
This threat scenario could involve a satellite performing maneuvers that approach a US spacecraft or a satellite doing something else unusual or unexpected. In such a scenario, the Space Force wants to have the capability to respond, either to deter an adversary from taking action or to defend a US satellite from an attack.​

 

NASA officially greenlights $3.35 billion mission to Saturn’s moon Titan​

Dragonfly will push the boundaries of engineering and science as it explores Titan.​

Artist's illustration of Dragonfly soaring over the dunes of Titan.


NASA has formally approved the robotic Dragonfly mission for full development, committing to a revolutionary project to explore Saturn's largest moon with a quadcopter drone.
Agency officials announced the outcome of Dragonfly's confirmation review last week. This review is a checkpoint in the lifetime of most NASA projects and marks the moment when the agency formally commits to the final design, construction, and launch of a space mission. The outcome of each mission's confirmation review typically establishes a budgetary and schedule commitment.
“Dragonfly is a spectacular science mission with broad community interest, and we are excited to take the next steps on this mission," said Nicky Fox, associate administrator of NASA's science mission directorate. "Exploring Titan will push the boundaries of what we can do with rotorcraft outside of Earth.”
In the case of Dragonfly, NASA confirmed the mission with a total lifecycle cost of $3.35 billion and a launch date of July 2028. That is roughly twice the mission's original proposed cost and a delay of more than two years from when the mission was originally selected in 2019, according to NASA.
 
Robert said:

NASA officially greenlights $3.35 billion mission to Saturn’s moon Titan​

Dragonfly will push the boundaries of engineering and science as it explores Titan.​

Artist's illustration of Dragonfly soaring over the dunes of Titan.'s illustration of Dragonfly soaring over the dunes of Titan.


NASA has formally approved the robotic Dragonfly mission for full development, committing to a revolutionary project to explore Saturn's largest moon with a quadcopter drone.
Agency officials announced the outcome of Dragonfly's confirmation review last week. This review is a checkpoint in the lifetime of most NASA projects and marks the moment when the agency formally commits to the final design, construction, and launch of a space mission. The outcome of each mission's confirmation review typically establishes a budgetary and schedule commitment.
“Dragonfly is a spectacular science mission with broad community interest, and we are excited to take the next steps on this mission," said Nicky Fox, associate administrator of NASA's science mission directorate. "Exploring Titan will push the boundaries of what we can do with rotorcraft outside of Earth.”
In the case of Dragonfly, NASA confirmed the mission with a total lifecycle cost of $3.35 billion and a launch date of July 2028. That is roughly twice the mission's original proposed cost and a delay of more than two years from when the mission was originally selected in 2019, according to NASA.
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Cool, but I want to see man walk on the moon in my lifetime. I was less than a year old when it last happened and now I'm a multi time grandfather. I'm tired of the excuses why we've not returned to the moon.

When I was younger I wanted to see man on Mars. Talk about lowered expectations! I probably won't get to see man on the moon in my lifetime.
 
redrumloa said:
Cool, but I want to see man walk on the moon in my lifetime. I was less than a year old when it last happened and now I'm a multi time grandfather. I'm tired of the excuses why we've not returned to the moon.

When I was younger I wanted to see man on Mars. Talk about lowered expectations! I probably won't get to see man on the moon in my lifetime.
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I'm greedy; I want to see all of it. :D Having said that, I agree that it's depressing how far we've fallen behind in manned space flight. I have a sneaking suspicion we'll see humans on the moon again within the next decade and I hope we both live at least that long.

In more uplifting space news, NASA has re-established contact with Voyager 1 after 5 months of silence.
 

NASA lays out how SpaceX will refuel Starships in low-Earth orbit​

"The fundamental flow mechanism is the pressure delta across the umbilical."​

Artist's illustration of two Starships docked belly-to-belly in orbit.


Some time next year, NASA believes SpaceX will be ready to link two Starships in orbit for an ambitious refueling demonstration, a technical feat that will put the Moon within reach.
SpaceX is under contract with NASA to supply two human-rated Starships for the first two astronaut landings on the Moon through the agency's Artemis program, which aims to return people to the lunar surface for the first time since 1972. The first of these landings, on NASA's Artemis III mission, is currently targeted for 2026, although this is widely viewed as an ambitious schedule.
Last year, NASA awarded a contract to Blue Origin to develop its own human-rated Blue Moon lunar lander, giving Artemis managers two options for follow-on missions.
Designers of both landers were future-minded. They designed Starship and Blue Moon for refueling in space. This means they can eventually be reused for multiple missions, and ultimately, could take advantage of propellants produced from resources on the Moon or Mars.
 
Looks like bad news for the Mercury mission:
This week the European Space Agency posted a slightly ominous note regarding its BepiColombo spacecraft, which consists of two orbiters bound for Mercury.

The online news release cited a "glitch" with the spacecraft that is impairing its ability to generate thrust. The problem was first noted on April 26, when the spacecraft's primary propulsion system was scheduled to undertake an orbital maneuver. Not enough electrical power was delivered to the solar-electric propulsion system at the time.

According to the space agency, a team involving its own engineers and those of its industrial partners began working on the issue. By May 7 they had made some progress, restoring the spacecraft's thrust to about 90 percent of its original level. But this is not full thrust, and the root cause of the problem is still poorly understood.

This is an ambitious mission, with an estimated cost of $2 billion. Undertaken jointly with the Japanese space agency, JAXA, BepiColombo launched on an Ariane 5 rocket in October 2018. So there is a lot riding on these thrusters. The critical question is, at this power level, can BepiColombo still perform its primary task of reaching orbit around Mercury?

The answer to this question is not so clear.
 
SpaceX demonstrated Thursday that its towering Super Heavy booster and Starship rocket might one day soon be recovered and reused in the manner Elon Musk has envisioned for the future of space exploration.

For the first time, both elements of the nearly 400-foot-tall (121-meter) rocket not only launched successfully from SpaceX's Starbase facility near Brownsville, Texas, but also came back to Earth for controlled splashdowns at sea. This demonstration is a forerunner to future Starship test flights that will bring the booster, and eventually the upper stage, back to land for reuse again and again.

The two-stage rocket took off from Starbase at 7:50 am CDT (12:50 UTC) and headed east over the Gulf of Mexico with more than 15 million pounds of thrust, roughly twice the power of NASA's Saturn V rocket from the Apollo lunar program of the 1960s and 1970s.

Checking all the boxes​

Starship, the largest and powerful launch vehicle ever built, is key to the future of SpaceX. NASA also has an interest in Starship's success because the agency selected it to fill the role of human-rated lunar lander for the Artemis program to ferry astronauts to and from the surface of the Moon.

There will be dozens more Starship flights before anyone actually climbs inside the Starship lander, and this probably won't happen sooner than the latter part of this decade. But some of the other goals for Starship, such as recovering and reusing the entire rocket, appear within reach.
 
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