NASA restores communication with mini-helicopter on Mars

livemint.com:

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) said on Saturday that it has successfully re-established communication with its small helicopter on Mars. The US space agency's statement comes after an unexpected interruption raised concerns that the diligent craft might have met its end.

“Good news today: We've reestablished contact with the #MarsHelicopter after instructing @NASAPersevere to perform long-duration listening sessions for Ingenuity’s signal. The team is reviewing the new data to better understand the unexpected comms dropout during Flight 72," NASA JPL said in a post on X.

As reported by AFP, Ingenuity, a drone standing at approximately 1.6 feet (0.5 meters) tall, landed on Mars in 2021 alongside the rover Perseverance, marking the first autonomous flight by a motorized craft on another planet. Also Read: New York to London in just 3.5 hours soon! NASA unveils X-59 supersonic jet ‘son of Concorde’ While data from the helicopter is transmitted to Earth via Perseverance, communication was unexpectedly lost during Ingenuity's 72nd lift-off on Mars during a test flight on Thursday.

NASA had reported that during Flight 72, Ingenuity had achieved an altitude of 40 feet (12 meters), which was a “quick pop-up vertical flight to check out the helicopter's systems, following an unplanned early landing during its previous flight." But during its descent, "communications between the helicopter and rover terminated early, prior to touchdown," the agency said. Also Read: No astronauts on moon until 2026 after NASA delays its Artemis mission.