Read on Twitter
Coming up at 11:30 a.m. ET: NASA officials discuss next steps for the Ingenuity helicopter
Lori Glaze dubs the Ingenuity flight demonstrations "a huge success," gives props to the JPL team -- “They have achieved the unbelievable and inspired the next generation of explorers with their Wright brothers moment last week.”
Glaze: "now time to pivot to Perseverance's exciting science campaign," but also room to expand the Ingenuity demonstration into a new phase. JPL team will elaborate on transition to operations
MiMi Aung says during Ingenuity's third flight, the helicopter flew 50 meters downrange -- so far it traveled outside of the field of view of MastcamZ, the rover's cam that was filming the flight
Ingenuity will transition to a 30-day operational demo phase, which means testing out future aerial applications, including scouting, stereo imaging for digital elevation maps. Lessons learned from these experiments “will feed forward” into future aerial explorers, Aung says.
Perseverance dep. project manager Jennifer Trosper says the rover will begin transitioning to science operations as Ingenuity completes flights 4 and 5 of its tech demo. Science will begin once Ingenuity's 5th flight is complete.
Trosper says the plan changed partially because Perseverance's first science site is closer to Ingenuity's airfield than anticipated. Coms range is also longer, so the rover and helicopter can do their respective tasks in parallel.
Project scientist Ken Farley says Perseverance's first target for sampling is a 1.6-kilometer swath, in which the rover is already located. Expect to find some interesting "mud stones" that represent the oldest material on the floor of Jezero Crater
Trosper says NASA will attempt to capture sound of Ingenuity's fourth flight after completing some characterization tests of the rover's cameras and microphones
Asked about Ingenuity's lifetime, chief engineer Bob Balaram says it's hard to say given off-the-shelf components. Landing gear is the only "consumable" bc it's good for 100 landings. Dust buildup is also something to watch bc that could make it harder to recharge the batteries
Lori Glaze says "there's a potential" to extend the 30-day ops demo. "We’re going to watch the performance and see the kind of data we get back,” how Percy and Ingenuity work together, and then “we’ll see where we are” after the 30 days.
On the 30-day ops window, Aung describes it as a race between “how long these parts surprise us” and how far NASA engineers push the helicopter during flights. She's mentioned before that if a flight is very daring, smashed landing gear isn't out of the question
