After more than two months of radio silence, NASA announced on Friday that they have re-established contact with the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter.
The Ingenuity, which traveled to Mars with the Perseverance rover earlier this year, has exceeded its initial 30-day mission and has successfully completed five test flights to demonstrate its technological capabilities.
Since then, it has been deployed multiple times to assist the Perseverance rover in its search for signs of ancient microbial life on Mars, which existed billions of years ago when the planet was much warmer and wetter.
On April 26, Ingenuity embarked on its 52nd flight. However, mission controllers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in California lost contact with the helicopter as it descended to the surface after a two-minute, 1,191-foot (363-meter) hop.
This loss of communication was expected due to a hill obstructing the line of sight between Ingenuity and Perseverance, which serves as a communication relay between the helicopter and Earth.
2023-07-02 15:00:04
Link from phys.org
