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Final images of Ingenuity reveal an entire blade broke off the helicopter
- isaacfrond 3y agoIf any technology could be cute, then surely this was it. I always got little engine that could vibes when reading news about it
- jtriangle 3y agoThat's what happens when you take a very cool project and back it with very talented PR people.
- h2odragon 3y agoThe ultimate fate of all toy helicopters. Wonder if the new "silent propeller" ring configuration shapes will be more durable. I recall the early Radio Shack toy helis had guard rings on their propellers, it helped immensely but they still were delicate and easy to kill.
- samstave 3y agoMartians got nuthin on Earthlings: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lq62GXEX4-U https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lq62GXEX4-U (Just curious why durability wasnt like 0. on the project RFP given that its a really far away deployment arena... (Also, to raise money, we should do Battle Bots on Mars. There should be a Twitch Rover (recall that thing from a while back about how many users fought over input into how it was driving...) EDIt: 0. Make durable. 1. Make it Fly. 2. Make it crawl, when 0=[1] and 1=[0].
- jareklupinski 3y ago> we should do Battle Bots on Mars has there ever been a sci-fi movie about 'No-limits barred" competitions on uninhabitable worlds? like go ahead, make a nuclear-powered doomsday bot and fight them on this rock, no one is there anyway
- dkarl 3y agoCheck out Peace on Earth by Stanislaw Lem.
- DonHopkins 3y agoI've got half a mind to read that book again, because there are some things about it that I just can't put my finger on... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_callosotomy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corpus_callosotomy
- jerf 3y agoYou have to have limits or in the limit you just end up with "whose nuclear bomb goes off closer to the starting whistle" or some equivalent. Now, even if you are interested in watching that and the precise mechanics of how to shave those last few nanoseconds off the explosion interest you, it's still a problem for "engagement" that the ruleset converges to one solution. Battlebots has had several similar issues over the years and a common discussion on its fan sites is whether or not the most recent rule set (whatever it may be at the time) is also converging on a single solution as the only viable option. Real car racing has an even bigger problem with this, in that the racing leagues simultaneously want to project an image of technological innovation and how all the teams are brilliant geniuses advancing the field of motor sports, while at the same time having to deal with how boring it is when one team ends up winning a hugely disproportionate amount of the time if you really did just leave it down to technical acumen and the vagueries of who started with an engine design this year that happened to have more optimization room than the other engines. They dress it up in a lot of rules and throw a lot of smokescreen up but to a pretty significant degree they basically just find some reason to throw weight penalties on to whoever is winning too much.
- TeMPOraL 3y agoMaybe we should put not just one, but several limits, denominated in joules (or kilotons), splitting the competition into "weight classes" in terms of maximum energy transfer. So e.g. flyweight class could end up being a competition between smart subsonic bullets, while the middleweight class may see a nuclear bomb facing off against pumped x-ray laser. I'd definitely watch the heck out of it.
- delecti 3y agoConsidering how low their stated expectations were for Ingenuity, I think it was more than durable enough. It's a huge bummer that it's grounded, but it was also a fantastic resounding success. Also, 0. was "get it to fly", and that required a pretty wild rotation speed, which probably limited their ability to make it much more durable.
- acdha 3y agoRemember that people were skeptical that they could pull off flight at all, and they set the bar for success at 5 flights but delivered 72 before it crashed! The linked story about how it narrowly got there is well worth reading: https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/02/before-ingenuity-ever-landed-on-mars-scientists-almost-managed-to-kill-it/ https://arstechnica.com/space/2024/02/before-ingenuity-ever-...
- fragmede 3y agoHaven't we proven we can do "durability" and "crawl", with Curiosity, Spirit, and Opportunity lasting several years longer than planned? Ingenuity was only supposed to last 30 days, but far exceeded that, even if the rotor did snap off. 0=[3+] 1=[1] 2=[2]
- TheRealPomax 3y agoPlus, no matter what you do you're still working in an environment where the very dust itself is an abrasive finer than anything found on Earth, able to work its way into every single part of your rotor assembly. You're basically designing for "how many days can we keep it working" rather than "can we make it Mars-proof".
- colechristensen 3y agoTo be fair, all helicopters have parts with expiration dates. This is just how you have to design them, a part gets this many operating hours and is then replaced.
- Teever 3y agoIs the dust in Mars really that abrasive? I was under the impression that it isn't nearly as bad as the stuff on the moon where there's no at atmosphere to cause the wind erosion that wears the rough edges of surface material down.
- Filligree 3y agoIt’s still abrasive, even if not as bad. A helicopter on the moon would have an even harder time working.
- TeMPOraL 3y agoPerhaps we can use Moon dust to our advantage: kick a thick enough cloud of it, and the helicopter will have something to fly in.
- bigallen 3y agoIt’s probably better to repurpose the energy of the kick than to push off what has been kicked up
- skykooler 3y agoEspecially considering there's no air for a helicopter's blades to act on.
- Aaronstotle 3y agoThis brought back a memory of going to the mall as a young kid (late 90s) and seeing those toy helicopters everywhere!
- darknavi 3y agoWhat a cool experiment (a Mars helicopter!). I can't wait until we (humanity) have "boots on the ground" there to make this sort of experimentation a few step changes quicker.
- acdha 3y agoI agree having grown up on sci-fi about that but increasingly wonder whether we’ll get enough AI to change the cost dynamics for sending fragile meat-bags to a harsh environment instead of robots. Also, I suspect climate change is going to force NASA to direct an increasing percentage of their work to earth, but I hope the symbolic potential keeps us from looking completely inward.
- TeMPOraL 3y agoStrong enough AI, probably. Until then, light speed dictates that even remote robotic exploration would work better with a command&control facility at the scene.
- yaomtc 3y agoHow about in geosynchronous orbit? So the control facility doesn't have to deal with the fine particles.
- TeMPOraL 3y agoThat is what I expect how things will be done. High orbit saves you not just from the fine dust, but also all the Δv you'd need to land people and get them up later.
- acdha 3y agoOh, no argument that it’d be better in terms of quality but I’m wondering how it’d look from a cost perspective. Say we could make a self-driving rover which could handle basic maneuvering, avoiding / recovering from hazards and storms, etc. – at some point there’d be a trade off between having many rovers running for years for less budget than a human crew would need, and depending on the budget climate it might be better to have a cheaper option that doesn’t fail to deliver any scientific results if a big dependency isn’t funded.
- ThrowawayTestr 3y agoHope I can visit it in a museum some day.
- juujian 3y ago[flagged]
- everyone 3y agoThe images remind of me the "fines" mentioned in KSR's Mars trilogy. Apparently the surface of Mars is covered in very fine particles 1000's of times smaller than grains of sand. Earth is too wet for particles like that to form. The fines would pretty much get anywhere, into any structure, through human cell membranes. We have no idea what affect they would have on earth biology.
- mlyle 3y ago> We have no idea what affect they would have on earth biology. We know that lunar regolith is pretty damn bad, and that Apollo astronauts did not enjoy even their very short, small exposures much It's thought to be quite toxic both because it's abrasive and filled with perchlorates and chlorates (and tests with simulants based on samples returned have provided additional evidence for this). Mars soils would have largely the same problems.
- everyone 3y agoI do know that one theory of how asbestos is carcinogenic is that it is so fine it just saws away at the actual DNA molecules. However asbestos works, it does seem that those fine nano-particles could act similarly https://youtu.be/_L1305206OA?feature=shared&t=98 https://youtu.be/_L1305206OA?feature=shared&t=98
- phendrenad2 3y agoJust another problem with terraforming Mars. Instead, we should set Jupiter on fire and live on Europa.
- TeMPOraL 3y agoYou say problem, true Martian hears challenge. Turning a desert into paradise probably starts with raising air humidity a bit.
- oneshtein 3y agoNano-particles are like a dirty water, but without water.
- LorenDB 3y agoo7 Rest in peace, Ingenuity. (Or should I say, rest in pieces?) You will be missed.
- EnigmaFlare 3y agoIn case anyone wants to keep an eye on the ongoing stream of images from the rovers, Nasa has an easy API that gives you a JSON file describing each image for the day. https://api.nasa.gov/mars-photos/api/v1/rovers/perseverance/latest_photos?api_key=put-your-key-here https://api.nasa.gov/mars-photos/api/v1/rovers/perseverance/... Get an API key here https://api.nasa.gov/ https://api.nasa.gov/ For example, today's record for a picture of the helicopter with the missing blade looks like this: { "id":1229137, "sol":1072, "camera":{"id":48,"name":"SUPERCAM_RMI","rover_id":8,"full_name":"SuperCam Remote Micro Imager"}, "img_src":"https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020-raw-images/pub/ods/surface/sol/01072/ids/edr/browse/scam/LRE_1072_0762099726_099ECM_N0501618SCAM02072_0010I9J02_1200.jpg", "earth_date":"2024-02-24", "rover":{"id":8,"name":"Perseverance","landing_date":"2021-02-18","launch_date":"2020-07-30","status":"active","max_sol":1072,"max_date":"2024-02-24","total_photos":202033,"cameras":[...]} }
- ySteeK 3y agoCould Ingenuity fly with 3 blades or is Ingenuity too heavy for that?
- Arrath 3y agoI expect it was flying on such razor thin margins of lift thanks to the sparse atmosphere that it needs all 4 to have a hope of liftoff.
- squarefoot 3y agoThe fact that it landed upright made me wonder if the blade already had a small crack forming where it is thinner (towards the opposite side of rotation) but was kept in place during its last flight, then Ingenuity landed and an electronic brake was triggered to recover some power to recharge the batteries. At this point the partially cracked blade because of its momentum got an opposite force that widened the crack until the blade was being torn away. Could make some sense, although there are so many ifs to satisfy.
- londons_explore 3y agoI'm curious that multiple sources seem to suggest we may never know why the blade broke. Did we not log the accelerometer/gyro data? A blade breaking would be very obvious on there. A blade hitting the ground would also be very obvious.
- boffinAudio 3y agoA thousand years from now, or maybe a million, someone is going to be digging in the sand and will find that broken prop, and then the rest of the helicopter, and it is either going to be mind-blowing, or mundane. Depends on if we're still around, I guess.