Ingenuity recently made its 53rd flight over the surface of Mars. As it turned out, it almost ended in the crash of a Martian drone.
NASA planned to conduct five Ingenuity flights. Despite the fact that the target was exceeded, the agency does not intend to lose the drone prematurely. In case of an emergency, there is a LAND_NOW command that recently saved Ingenuity from an accident.
The space agency wanted the Martian drone to fly for 2 minutes and 16 seconds during the 53rd flight. However, instead, Ingenuity landed 1 minute and 14 seconds after takeoff. It flew 142 meters instead of the planned 203 meters.
The problem is the discrepancy between the frames from the navigation camera and the data from the inertial system. In this case, the LAND_NOW command is triggered because the drone has no data to determine its position above the planet’s surface.
This situation first occurred during the sixth flight, which took place in May 2021. NASA has now fixed the software and plans to conduct a test flight of 25 seconds, during which Ingenuity will take off and land.
