Two days after shedding contact with Ingenuity, its autonomous helicopter in Mars, NASA introduced it has regained contact and is inspecting the supply of the problem.
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”)
Copyright © 2024 NPR. All rights reserved. Go to our web site phrases of use and permissions pages at www.npr.org for additional info.
NPR transcripts are created on a rush deadline by an NPR contractor. This textual content might not be in its last type and could also be up to date or revised sooner or later. Accuracy and availability could range. The authoritative document of NPR’s programming is the audio document.
