The Mars rover has been inactive for several days. Dust covering his solar panel causes power loss and makes ground topological communications difficult. A long game of hide and seek is then played with the Perseverance Rover.
You will also be interested
[EN VIDÉO] Ingenuity, always more, always faster The Ingenuity Martian Helicopter made its 25th flight on April 8, 2022.
Mars drone Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) In recent months the chain of airlines has crossed the 50 milestonee. The latest flight to date was flight 51 on April 23. But it has been more than a month since the drone flew. The radio voltage is increasing.
The last flights of ingenuity were used for reconnaissance: the drone flew over a number of sites pre-selected by scientists, to better analyze their scientific value – or – before sending the rover. This makes it possible to better sequence the sites to be analyzed, where the samples can be brought back to Earth. However, the task is not easy. The footage captured by the RTE camera does not always live up to scientists’ expectations due to flight conditions or technical problems.
did you know ?
For the right levels of persistence and ingenuity, Available on the JPL website Recent developments.
Unanswered calls
As the Martian summer approaches, the drone loses a lot of power due to dust clinging to its single tiny solar panel. There are also scheduling issues. However, having survived the last Martian winter, the drone no longer needs to wake up on schedule. Persistence’s tool table also reduced windows for interacting with the drone.
Another concern is that the topologies of locations further complicate communication between the drone and the rover. Flight 50 was delayed due to this. The drone was separated from the rover by a small ridge, its antenna pointing the wrong way. This led to a week-long total radio blackout, the first of 700 sols (Mars days) of observations.
Again, intelligence no longer gives any sign of life. As the rover continues on its merry way, JBL teams try to unravel this new game of hide-and-seek, which threatens to repeat itself more and more often.
