NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter high-speed ‘nail-biter’ flight
Friday, July 9th 2021, 5:56 pm – The Mars helicopter broke records as it flew at high speed over ‘unfriendly terrain’ this week. Although it was only intended as a simple technology demonstration, after nine successful flights, NASA’s Mars Ingenuity helicopter continues to prove to be a valuable member of the mission science team.
Around midday on July 5, on Mars, that is, the Mars helicopter lifted off on its 9th successful flight over Jezero Crater. It was a ‘nail-biter’ according to the mission team. The drone flew farther, faster, and spent more time in the air than it ever had on any of its flights before.
Ingenuity’s shadow is clearly visible in this mid-flight Navcam image taken during Flight 9, on July 5, 2021. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
“Flight 9 was not like the flights that came before it,” the team wrote in a blog post on Wednesday. “It broke our records for flight duration and cruise speed, and it nearly quadrupled the distance flown between two airfields. But what really set the flight apart was the terrain that Ingenuity had to negotiate during its 2 minutes and 46 seconds in the air — an area called ‘Séítah’ that would be difficult to traverse with a ground vehicle like the Perseverance rover. This flight was also explicitly designed to have science value by providing the first close view of major science targets that the rover will not reach for quite some time.”
Séítah (which means “amidst the sand” in Navajo) is one of Perseverance’s first major science targets in Jezero Crater. It is a low-lying area, littered with rocks and striped with numerous rippled sand dunes. Unfortunately, the terrain of Séítah might be too treacherous to risk driving Perseverance into the middle of it. On the other hand, Ingenuity was able to fly over the most interesting targets, snapping colour images to send back to the team.
This raw image was snapped by Ingenuity’s Color Camera, at 12:35 p.m. local time on Mars, on July 5, 2021. While the black and white Navcam photos show the view directly below the drone, the Color Camera is pointed off to the side, at approximately 22 degrees below the horizon. The small silver ball at the top left (and the tiny fraction of one visible top right) are the helicopter’s landing feet. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech
One of the reasons this flight was a ‘nail-biter’ is that, so far, Ingenuity has flown over mostly level ground. Séítah represented a patch of ‘unfriendly terrain’ as the team called it in a blog post leading up to the flight. The ground sloped down into the feature, and Ingenuity flew over numerous sand dunes before the terrain rose again and levelled out at the helicopter’s next flat airfield. The problem with flying over this kind of terrain is that Ingenuity’s navigation software wasn’t designed to interpret changes in the distance between it and the ground.
“When we as human beings look at moving images of the ground, such as those taken by Ingenuity’s navigation camera, we instantly have a pretty good understanding of what we’re looking at,” the team wrote. “We see rocks and ripples, shadows and texture, and the ups and downs of the terrain are relatively obvious. Ingenuity, however, doesn’t have human perception and understanding of what it’s looking at. It sees the world in terms of individual, anonymous features — essentially dots that move around with time — and it tries to interpret the movement of those dots.”
Their solution to this was relatively simple.
“We told it that those features are all located on flat ground.”
This map shows the approximate flight path of Ingenuity during its July 5th flight. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech.
There is a risk to this solution, though. If Ingenuity’s navigational computer makes a wrong interpretation of something it sees in the images during flight, it can cause the helicopter to veer off course. Careful planning and anticipating potential problems based on other imagery the obtain of the flight path ahead of time can help reduce the risk.
Now, with Ingenuity resting at its new airfield, southwest of Séítah, the team is waiting for all the high-resolution colour imagery to arrive here on Earth. Of particular interest is a feature known as “Pilot Pinnacle,” which could be leftover from the deepest water environments in the lake that once filled Jezero Crater.
See more here: theweathernetwork.com
Header image: IndiaTimes.com
Please Donate Below To Support Our Ongoing Work To Defend The Scientific Method
PRINCIPIA SCIENTIFIC INTERNATIONAL, legally registered in the UK as a company 
incorporated for charitable purposes. Head Office: 27 Old Gloucester Street, London WC1N 3AX.
Trackback from your site.
Dave Hunt
| #
Does anyone believe this can fly on a planet with no atmosphere? This is all bullshit!! NASA must have a very large CGI department.
Reply
Herb Rose
| #
Hi Dave,
Mars has an atmosphere mostly consisting of CO2. Since it cold on Mars the atmosphere is dense at low altitudes giving the blades more lift. A satellite will “burn” up in the atmosphere during an uncontrolled entry but there is no atmosphere to give lift to a helicopter?
Herb
Reply
Andrew Pilkington
| #
Damned Right, Dave. The only thing these people have ever sent to Space, is our Imagination. lmao
But, the Tax Payers don’t mind forking out Billions of Dollars each year, to keep the Nazi dream alive (“Project Paperclip”).
Reply
Mark Tapley
| #
The NASA money laundering program is at it again. Over 50 years ago men were walking on Kubrick’s front screen projection moonscape. This project is not so ambitious. Just an unmanned probe on a fake Mars. Anyway they need to keep the goyim focused on the fake virus. More new variants could hit at any time.
Reply
Andy
| #
The level of scientific illiteracy shown in two oif the three comments above is saddening.
Reply
Jerry Krause
| #
Hi Andy,
Right or wrong, will you please justify the cost of this project relative to the value of any NEW SCIENTIFIC KNOWLEDGE gained. Based upon the biographies that I have read, the Wright Bros financed their first minute or two (I don’t remember precisely) of flight instead of these engineers being paid by taxpayers or by deficit spending by the USA government. I believe everyone agrees that these NASA employees are being paid by the government of the PEOPLE of the USA.
Have a good day, Jerry
Reply
Andy
| #
Hi Jerry. Firstly, your comment was the one I agreed with, the other two (now three) show a staggering lack of understanding. I cannot justify any space project, I am not funding it, but NASA has obviously chosen to spend the money on the helicopter mission.
Reply
Herb Rose
| #
Hi Andy,
I am NOT Jerry Krause. As to Jerry’s complaint about costs, one never knows the benefits that will come from a new exploration until one takes the chance. Queen Isabella of Spain used her jewelry as collateral for Columbus’s voyages without knowing the return. It paid off handsomely for Spain but there are many that don’t. You never know until you try.
Herb
Reply
Mark Tapley
| #
Hello Herb:
That is always the excuse given for misappropriation of someone else’s money. The Apollo money laundering program cost a hundred billion in 1969 dollars. Even assuming the NASA lies were true, and I have provided overwhelming proof that it was all a poorly done fake, the cost benefit ratio is not justified.
Everyone but a few patriotic apologists like you realize this. And NASA has tacitly admitted it was all fake. Who in their right mind would believe that ALL of the footage from what would be the most historically and technically significant achievement in history was “accidentally” erased. NASA has also surreptitiously admitted the fake by posting the “in your face” reflection from the ass tronaut’s visor showing one of the film crew standing there “on the moon.” Just a close up of the cobbled together lunar module that looks like it was made in the back yard is further proof of where the money went (in the insiders pockets).
The space shuttle hoax is the same thing. I post the article below of all those heroic ass tronauts (less one) who died in there quest to expand our knowledge (and line the insiders pockets) with billions more in stolen money. 30 years later all of them were located and photographed except one who had probably died in the interim. All of you Jewmerica flag wavers my recall that originally this fake mission was touted by the Jew media as a means to provide vehicles for the launching of satellites into space. That subterfuge was quickly abandoned but the tax money kept rolling in.
This same syndicate today is running the incredibly profitable fake virus scam and pushing the climate change hoax as a way to compete their plundering operation and completely subjugate the plantation livestock in what is their pinnacle of programs. The Sustainable Development Initiative Agenda 2030-21.
https://aplanetruth.info/theyre-alive-challenger-crew-found-alive-and-well-30-years-since-the-disaster/
https://www.bitchute.com/video/IIQVkm1EOKFB/
Andy
| #
Sorry Herb, wrong name 🙂
Herb Rose
| #
Hi Mark,
You seem to ignore any counter arguments to your beliefs. The so called image of a stage hand would not look like that when reflected from a convex visor.
You look at the cost as a total waste but you ignore the technological advancements that have revolutionized the world since the 60s that are a direct result of the effort. For you and Jerry all that money was a complete waste by those who tried to turn base metals into gold and we’d be better off without chemistry.
Herb
Mark Tapley
| #
Hello Herb:
It wasn’t my image. It was posted on yahoo news by NASA. An indirect admission of the hoax. I never said that nothing was accomplished in all the hundreds of billions that was spent. Lazarus got some of the crumbs that fell from the rich mans table. My point is that had ALL of the money been spent on specific scientific endeavors instead of going into the insiders pockets while leaving only a fraction for real development work we would be miles ahead.
This monumental space program fraud could only be perpetrated by the top levels of a corrupt government that is rotten to the very core, using a program of systematic plunder against the productive segment of society. This is the same syndicate of criminals that drives the wars causing the deaths and misery of millions of innocent people, engineer 911’s, WMD’s, staged riots, fake shootings and civil unrest.
As Gobbles stated, “the bigger the lie the better.” There is no act too vile and no deed so reprehensible they will not contemplate and bring to fruition no matter the cost in blood or treasure. We see this now in the long planned global implementation of the fake virus in which these super criminals using a fear campaign of imaginary pathogens are waging war on all of humanity.
NASA exploits such as the fake shuttle program and mission to Mars are just profitable diversions in the long term trajectory that is now being orchestrated by the Club of Rome’s over 50 year old “global warming” hoax and the over hundred year germ theory blood toxin injection for imaginary pathogens program now enhanced by the chemistry of graphene oxide.
https://www.bitchute.com/video/LLJgw4v6JrXQ/
Reply
Herb Rose
| #
Hi Mark,
Governments waste money. That’s their job. They do things that they think needs to be done where nobody else believes it to be worthwhile. How would you compare the benefits of money wasted on NASA to the billions wasted on the war on poverty, the saving of Iraq, or the multiple boondoggles undertaken that benefit nobody? I would prefer the waste of NASA to the harmful waste of global warming.
Herb
Reply
Mark Tapley
| #
Hello Herb:
You got the first part right anyway. They do things that they think will enrich them selves and their criminal friends. They use the power of the government to make society work for them. This has always been the case since societies advanced from substance agriculture and first produced a surplus.
Governments produce nothing, but merely redistribute the wealth of producers to non producers. The so called War of poverty you mention, launched by Zionist LBJ in the 60’s is a perfect example. Now at over 15 trillion down the rat hole, this massive wealth transfer has not only made poverty worse but has destroyed real jobs in the real economy that would have lifted all boats had the money been left in the hands of those that produced it. NASA is just another angle of the scam. All of this technology that had a viable market would have been achieved by private enterprise at a fraction of the cost.
If the “saving of Iraq” by the Yinnon Plan for Greater Israel and the fake “War on Terror” or the transparently ridiculous “climate change” fraud were just mis calculations that would be bad enough. But if that were the case, common sense would prevail after a short time. The same can be said of this incredibly evil eugenics program of the fake virus.
These are all carefully planned and highly coordinated agendas. You can’t make an omelette without breaking some eggs, and the Zionists can’t move society where they want it without waste and destruction. Don’t make the mistake of thinking this is all just a bureaucratic mistake. Like Zionist puppet FDR stated:
“In politics, nothing happens by accident. If it happens, you can bet it was planned that way.”
When you get big government you get big corruption. Unless this criminal syndicate is shut down and their policies reversed their goal of a technocratic Neo feudal society will be a reality,
best regards, Mark
Reply