With Flight 17, Ingenuity continues its journey again to Wright Brothers Area on the Octavia E. Butler touchdown web site. Flight 17 is the third flight of this journey and is scheduled to happen no sooner than Sunday, Dec. 5 with the information arriving again on Earth no sooner than later that very same day.
Flight 17 is roughly half of Flight 9 in reverse, which was one of the difficult flights for Ingenuity to this point. The crossing of the “Séítah” area of Mars’ Jezero Crater will take at the least two flights, with a cease midway throughout. This cease is important for 2 causes. Ingenuity’s decreased flight time, due to larger rotor RPMs, implies that Ingenuity would want to fly sooner to cowl the identical distance. Flying sooner will increase the navigation uncertainty constructed up throughout a flight, which suggests bigger touchdown ellipses are required. By flying slower, Ingenuity can higher goal a touchdown web site in South Séítah.
The second cause is that the terrain on the jap aspect of South Séítah is extra hazardous than the western aspect. Throughout flight 9, we knew Ingenuity would have a bigger uncertainty within the touchdown location, however that was acceptable for the reason that space was comparatively benign. This isn’t the case this time round. With two flights, Ingenuity can higher goal protected touchdown websites on the jap aspect of Séítah, with out extreme threat on touchdown.
Throughout Flight 17, Ingenuity is anticipated to fly 187 meters at an altitude of 10 meters and be airborne for 117 seconds.
