Ingenuity, Mars 2020 Helicopter Drone

[FutureSpaceTourist]

https://twitter.com/nasajpl/status/1427493737219776521

A dozen for the books!🚁The #MarsHelicopter’s latest flight took us to the geological wonder that is the “South Séítah” region. It climbed 32.8 ft (10 m) for a total of 169 seconds and flew ~1,476 ft (~450 m) roundtrip to scout the area for @NASAPersevere. https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter/#

[FutureSpaceTourist]

https://arstechnica.com/science/2021/08/after-a-dozen-flights-nasas-chopper-has-yet-to-come-a-cropper/

After a dozen flights, NASA’s chopper has yet to come a cropper
Kitty Hawk a century ago. Mars today. Where 100 years from now?

ERIC BERGER - 8/17/2021, 6:08 PM

[TrevorMonty]

That article has jinked it, especially as next flight is 13th. Ask RL about 13th missions.

Sent from my SM-T810 using Tapatalk

[spacexplorer]

Once there, the helicopter will make a 5-meter “sidestep” in order to get side-by-side images of the surface terrain suitable to construct a stereo, or 3D, image.

Did the 3d images from flight 10 come out?

[Star One]

Ingenuity’s 12th flight:

[Cherurbino]

Did the 3d images from flight 10 come out?

You may answer yourself, if you look at the whole set acquired in this flight (leave only sol 152 in the options filter).

I'm doubtful about the quality of 3D images combined from one camera placed at two rather distant positions. It's not by chance that the lenses of such special stereoscopic imaging instrument as Mastcam-Z are firmly fixed at a distance close to the distance between human eyes.

[spacexplorer]

I was asking about official NASA releases of anaglyphs from flight10. I already know that all raw images are always available.

There's a reason for taking shots at distance way higher than interpupillar distance: to see 3d effect hundreds or thousands of meters away, which is  impossible for human eye.
When I shoot 3d photos to clouds or mountains, I take 2 shots 100m away or more, and result is amazing (but a little confusing  for clouds, which always change between the two shots).

[Cherurbino]

There's a reason for taking shots at distance way higher than interpupillar distance: to see 3d effect hundreds or thousands of meters away, which is  impossible for human eye.
When I shoot 3d photos…

I'm sure your camera provides better resolution than Ingenuity's Sony IMX 214 global shutter  . For professionals lense matters more than matrix size, and if we speak about distant oblects, comparison between Mastcam (top) and RTE (bottom) seems to be not in favour of Ingenuity.

* top: https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/multimedia/raw-images/ZL0_0168_0681868268_144ECM_N0060170ZCAM08180_048085J
* bottom: https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/multimedia/raw-images/HSF_0174_0682390539_669ECM_N0120001HELI00001_000085J

Perseverance (I encircled it) is somehow distinguishable due to its brightness, while the distant slopes dissoulte. It's impossible to build a relief map.

For this illustration I used 1:1 cutouts from origilal files; no resizing was applied.

Original RTE has a standard 4208 width (exactly the width of the matrix), while original file of Navcam was 1648 pixels wide.

[Cherurbino]

FLIGHT 11

Sadly, my Seagate expansion portable drive with all my space-related files and the animated gif compliator crashed recently. Since the free 'trial' version of EasyGif leaves its watermarks, I cannot upload files with them to Wikipedia, so the attached file is uploaded only here.

Exclusively for the forum.nasaspaceflight.com — FLIGHT 12! 

[edzieba]

I'm doubtful about the quality of 3D images combined from one camera placed at two rather distant positions. It's not by chance that the lenses of such special stereoscopic imaging instrument as Mastcam-Z are firmly fixed at a distance close to the distance between human eyes.

Ingenuity is taking images for metrology, not for direct viewing by a human, a human-like ILD is no absolutely no value whatsoever. An increased baseline allows for both reduced Z-depth error and for increased texture coverage for surface reconstruction (i.e. you can see both sides of an object at lower oblique angles).

[Cherurbino]

A very informative map of flight 12 and expected (?) Perseverance tracks from Twitter (https://twitter.com/65dbNoise/status/1429093549929283585). Obvious misprint (flight 8  → flight 11) corrected

65dBA noise @65dbNoise

Aug. 21
With  help from @thomas_appere's rectified color images, I now have the rough locations of #MarsHelicopter's shadow in all 8 color images from flight 8 flight 11. The last one is of the location named Seitah-S in the initial plans.

@NASAJPL #Ingenuity #PerseveranceRover

[Phil Stooke]

"I'm doubtful about the quality of 3D images combined from one camera placed at two rather distant positions."

It works.  Long Baseline Stereo imaging has been done repeatedly by Mars rovers (and presumably elsewhere) - for instance Opportunity as it approached Solander Point on the rim of Endeavour crater, and Spirit looking down into the Inner Basin of the Columbia Hills from the top of Husband Hill.  Tried, tested and trusted.

[Phil Stooke]

"A very informative map of flight 12 "

It's very useful, but users should note that the last point is a bit south of the true location.  That last leg of the flight was parallel to the earlier track in that location.

[Cherurbino]

"A very informative map of flight 12 "

Just finished attaching timestamped images to the route (in attachment).

users should note that the last point is a bit south of the true location.  That last leg of the flight was parallel to the earlier track in that location.

Anyway the user who made that map was right when he gave a different name to the the landing site.

24 meters east from the takeoff point is about 5 times more than the requirement to the dimensions of the landing site at the tech demo stage (10×10 m). It should be named Field I, not Field H.

[Cherurbino]

That last leg of the flight was parallel to the earlier track in that location.

My universal 'visual scale' for RTE



returns the rough estimate of the eastward translation on the backward flight at the moment of passing "point 1" (closest to a/f; timestamps 13:24:28 and 13:26:20) not more than 10-12 meters (by width: 750 px of 1/6 of a 4208-wide matrix, and by height 750 px from the bottom of 3120 px height). Thus, the question is why this deviation to the left almost doubled in the last 23 seconds of flight (landed at 13:26:43)?


P.S. seems that additional NAVs were uploaded to the storage recently

[Cherurbino]

P.S. seems that additional NAVs were uploaded to the storage recently

Good news is that the JPL really added a few NAV's, bad news is that the set for flight 12 is still incomplete.

I recomplied the animation, now it counts 115 frames.

[Cherurbino]

Cc. Phil Stooke:

1. On your map Artuby is inscribed as a ridge (like Raised Ridges), while Roger Wiens (https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/mission/status/323) and unknown author (https://mars.nasa.gov/resources/26063/supercam-image-of-artuby/) calls Artuby an outcrop. The word 'ridges' supposes something stretched, extended for hundreds of metres, while an 'outcrop' is percieved as something more compact, local. Stratigraphically and geologically the lonely mountains (like Kodiak) are also outcrops, but they are not stretched horizontally. Is there any controversy between definitions?



The issue of "Artuby" is not as idle as it might seem. On June 16 this name was assigned to a small outcrop, which Perseverance distinguished at a far distance (from the opposite 'shore', see photo above). Does it mean that now people at JPL apply toponym Artuby to the whole southern 'shore' of the southern Seitah sinus?

2.

I'm doubtful about the quality of 3D images combined from one camera placed at two rather distant positions.

It works.  <...Opportunity...Spirit...> Tried, tested and trusted.

The 4-month absence of anaglyphs based on the Ingenuity's photos makes me worry that it falls out of this list. For the first time the 3D images from its b/w (!!!) NAV camera were promised four months ago. This is exactly what MiMi Aung said on April, 30 (quotation from the status report #297):

We also managed to capture lots of images during the flight with the color camera and with Ingenuity’s black-and-white navigation camera, which tracks surface features as it flies. Images from that navigation camera are typically used by Ingenuity’s flight controller and then thrown away unless we specifically tell the helicopter to store them for later use. During this flight, we saved even more images than we did on our previous flights: about 60 total during the last 164 feet (50 meters) before the helicopter returned to its landing site.

Capturing images like that provides a technical challenge – another way to test Ingenuity – and provides an aerial perspective of Mars that humanity has never seen before. We’ll use these images to study the surface features of the terrain. Some of our black-and-white images were taken as stereo pairs, allowing us to test our ability to make 3D imagery of the surface and study the elevation of different sites below us.

Figure "about 60" is correct: for Apr., 30 (sol 68) there are 62 b/w images stored both at NASA and at another professional storage. Their timestamps (from 12:34:01 to 12:35:15) confirm the words of MiMi that all these photos were taken on the return leg of a roundup trip. But if helicopter was not ordered to store the frames from the first half of the roundup trip, then buildng 3-D without the paired frames (like those acquired in two last flights) is at least comlpicated if not to say impossible.

[Schrauber]

Today, sol 187 the rover is marked at the location map with sol 180 and the helicopter with Sol 163. In spring the helicopter flights were annouced until "end of August" which is now.
Does anybody know, why the rover is not moving or has been updated?

[Phil Stooke]

Schrauber:  go to this page of rover updates or status reports: https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/mission/status/.  Another useful page is here:  https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/news/

Check them every few days and you will know what is going on.  Perseverance is still at that sol 180 location, busy collecting a rock sample.  The map is up to date.


Cherurbino: see this comment at the end of the recent status report by Roger Wiens: "Perseverance has now driven several hundred meters further, scouting out “Artuby” ridge, which contains a number of outcrops showing different styles of layering."

Or this in a figure caption in the update by Jennifer Trosper: "This Mastcam-Z image of a portion of the Artuby ridgeline shows large (meter-scale) boulders similar to those Perseverance is expected to encounter at Citadelle. "

The first use of the name suggested it was a specific small outcrop, but in fact it was showing only part of a larger feature.  Subsequent use of the name makes that clear.

[Cherurbino]

Cherurbino: see this comment at the end of the recent status report by Roger Wiens: "Perseverance has now driven several hundred meters further, scouting out “Artuby” ridge, which contains a number of outcrops showing different styles of layering."

Or this in a figure caption in the update by Jennifer Trosper: "This Mastcam-Z image of a portion of the Artuby ridgeline shows large (meter-scale) boulders similar to those Perseverance is expected to encounter at Citadelle. "

The first use of the name suggested it was a specific small outcrop, but in fact it was showing only part of a larger feature.  Subsequent use of the name makes that clear.

Thank you, Phil; your clarification shall help me in the further improving of the Wikipedia articles. Also I would like to express grateful words for the entire map of all the named locations in Mars-2020 you published 2 weeks ago at UFSF. It helps me to fill a new table (English version is planned at the next iteration).