NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter turns ‘winter warrior’ for next flight

The last time we heard from the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, it was grounded temporarily ahead of winter and dust season on the red planet. But now, the NASA team working on the rotorcraft is preparing for its next flight, which could happen this week. Ingenuity’s 30th flight will be a short hop to check system health after the rotorcraft survived 101 Martian sols of winter. It will also collect landing delivery data to support NASA’s Mars Sample Return Campaign and potentially clear off the dust that has settled on its solar panel since the last flight.
Flight 29 happened over a month ago on June 11. In order to confirm that the rotorcraft is still flight-ready, the Ingenuity team performed a 50 rpm spin on August 6, followed a high-speed spin on August 15, where the roto system sped up to flight-like speeds of 2,573 rpm. Telemetry data from both tests indicate that the helicopter is ready for flight.

But Ingenuity is currently in the Jezero Crater, where overnight temperatures go as low as -86 degrees celsius. The wintertime also means that the amount of solar energy received the solar panels remains below what is needed to maintain charge in the batteries. But the panel does collect enough charge to make short hops possible, which is what NASA plans with Flight 30.
Flight 30 will happen later in the Martian afternoon on the selected day, around 4 PM local Mars time. This is so that Ingenuity’s batteries have the time to obtain as much charge as possible. During the flight, the helicopter will climb to a max altitude of 5 metres, translate sideways about 2 metres and then land. It will be aloft for a total of 33 seconds.
As the environment continues to improve, NASA plans to continue Ingenuity’s flight path towards the river delta. As the daily recoverable battery charge increases, it will be able to embark on longer flights until eventually, it will be able to power its internal heaters overnight, which can stop electronics from freezing every evening. The space agency also plans a flight-software upgrade for September. The upgrade is aimed at enabling new navigation capabilities so that Ingenuity can fly better across the river delta terrain.