By NASA/JPL
July 15, 2022
In this illustration, NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter stands on the Red Planet’s ground as NASA’s Perseverance rover (partly visible on the left) rolls away. Credit ranking: NASA/JPL-Caltech
Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Postpones Flights Except AugustIt’s now grime season and iciness in the assign on Mars where NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter is positioned. This implies there’s extra grime in the air and no more sunlight hours accessible to support recharge Ingenuity’s batteries. Mud levels are predicted to subside later in July, so the team has made up our minds to give the helicopter’s batteries a ruin for a couple of weeks in instruct to manufacture their day-to-day utter of cost encourage up. Counting on weather stipulations, Ingenuity is expected to be encourage in the air at some level of the commence of August.
Illustration of NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter on Mars. Credit ranking: NASA/JPL-Caltech
As lately explained, the iciness season on Mars is especially sophisticated on batteries. One extensive part of this is the shorter days, which way much less sunlight hours accessible for the photo voltaic cells mature to recharge the batteries. (Excess grime in the air makes this even worse.) On the opposite hand, but one more extensive challenge is the cool weather when in a single day temperatures can crumple to minus 112 °F (minus 80 °C). At low temperatures, batteries abolish not originate as effectively. The cool additionally necessitates the use of a battery draining heater to present protection to electronics from the negative outcomes of cool cycling.