Composed by Martin Cacan, Ingenuity Pilot at NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Animation of NASA Ingenuity Mars Helicopter from above. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
The accurate landing target for Flight 19 is near the landing website of Flight 8. Images taken throughout Flight 9 by the rotorcrafts high-resolution Return-To-Earth (RTE) camera were utilized to pick a safe landing zone.
Flight 19 Landing Zone: The targeted landing zone for Ingenuitys Flight 19 can be seen in this RTE image from Flight 9. The targeted landing area is in the center of the image, simply listed below the rover tracks. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
While short, the flight has a challenging start due to featureless sandy terrain that the helicopter currently sits on. At first chosen for the lack of rocks to land safely, the area is really so devoid of rock that cautions were reported throughout Flight 18 landing due to insufficient features to track in the vision navigation. As a result, fault security parameters will be updated to reduce the threat of a premature landing mid-ascent.
Flight 19 is the third needed to cover the exact same ground flown throughout Flight 9– in the opposite direction. This slower method was taken due to the lack of large landing sites in this portion of Séítah and lower climatic density in the summertime which needs higher rotor speeds and power draw from the motors. Spanning 207 feet (63 meters), this flight will last about 100 seconds at a groundspeed of 2.2 mph (1 meter per second) and elevation of 33 feet (10 meters) while taking 9 brand-new RTE images. The last act of the flight is to turn almost 180 degrees to flip the RTE electronic camera to a forward-facing orientation for future flights towards the river delta.
The accurate landing target for Flight 19 is near the landing site of Flight 8. Flight 19 Landing Zone: The targeted landing zone for Ingenuitys Flight 19 can be seen in this RTE image from Flight 9. The last act of the flight is to turn nearly 180 degrees to turn the RTE video camera to a forward-facing orientation for future flights toward the river delta.