NASA regains contact with its helicopter on Mars : NPR

AYESHA RASCOE, HOST:

Have you ever ever misplaced your keys for a few days? Possibly your pockets? How about your autonomous helicopter?

(SOUNDBITE OF THOMAS NEWMAN’S “WALL-E”)

RASCOE: Properly, that is what occurred to NASA final week. The house company introduced it had misplaced contact with Ingenuity, an autonomous helicopter conducting analysis on Mars. Ingenuity is the primary plane to realize powered, managed flight on one other planet and can be a part of the company’s Mars Exploration Program, a long-term effort to discover the crimson planet. The house helicopter executed a flight that day to check its techniques in what NASA known as a fast pop-up vertical flight. It went up 40 ft, however on the way in which down, Ingenuity stopped speaking with Perseverance, a Mars rover that relays information between the helicopter and Earth through the flights. However after a tense couple of days, engineers at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in California obtained excellent news. Perseverance, the rover, reestablished contact with Ingenuity after it performed what NASA calls long-duration listening periods for Ingenuity’s sign. See? Good issues occur once we hear.

(SOUNDBITE OF THOMAS NEWMAN’S “WALL-E”)

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