Kind: captions
Language: en
427 days into what should have been a
30-day Mission and it's turned into a
nightmare on the surface of Mars 297
million km away is ingenuity a tiny 680
G helicopter it's made from
off-the-shelf Parts you'd find at home
it's got bits from an Android smartphone
batteries from a cordless drill and to
everyone's surprise it's been performing
well so far but something is wrong see
the Martian winter is coming at night
temperatures plummet to a frigid 85° c
as Mars gets further away from the Sun
the temperature keeps dropping and it
kicks up more and more violent dust the
Sun is blotted from the sky on her 427th
day on Mars they try to reach her just
like the day before but they get no
response they try
again nothing back on Earth the team
gathers at the jet propulsion laboratory
in Southern California all the signs
point to Ingenuity being dead but there
is still one thing one final trick they
can try to reestablish a
connection the first drone that's going
to fly on another planet 6 years ago I
visited JPL and saw Ingenuity before she
left for Mars at the time NASA didn't
really believe much in her Mission as
Kenneth Farley the project scientist to
the Mars 2020 perseverance Mission said
I've personally been opposed to it
spending 30 days working on a technology
demonstration does not further the goals
directly from the science point of view
in short they thought it was a waste of
time most projects to Mars get billions
of dollars Ingenuity got only 80 million
Which is less than the budget of the
movie The
Martian but this Scrappy team of
scientists were working to prove a crazy
concept and against the
odds they made it to Mars
on February 18th 2021 the perseverance
Rover survives entry and lands on the
Martian surface attached underneath is
ingenuity this marks Saul zero her first
day on
Mars they sever the umbilical cord and
Ingenuity affectionately known as jinny
by some on the team prepares
herself her mission is simple prove that
flight on the red planet is possible but
with an atmosphere just 1% that of Earth
flying is really difficult she must be
ultra light and her blades must spin at
over 2,400 rotations per minute to
generate enough
lift it's a design that no one is really
sure about for 2 months they rigorously
check her systems running up the engine
testing navigation and her control
computer then on Saul 58 they finally
think they're ready the blades spin up
and she takes off
only 120 years after the Wright brothers
on Earth Humanity flies on another
planet within days they fly again and
then again and again in just one month
they complete five flights so the
mission has been
accomplished we were a tick demo right
meaning a specified narrow 30A Mission
um get in get out we're done right we go
to a bar and party and that should be
the end of it but with success comes new
expectations NASA tells them to keep
going Ingenuity new mission is to assist
perseverance in the search for evidence
of ancient Life on Mars so she will
Scout ahead Gathering data in areas too
risky or costly for the Rover to explore
for the team this is great news but it's
also a problem there was no guarantee at
you know after flight 5 we may be dead
by flight 7 right we may be dead by
flight 10 we were kind of thrown into
the deep end of the pool we had no
processes or no plans developed for such
a thing until now every flight had been
carefully planned they've all started
from an area selected and analyzed by
both satellites and the perseverance
Rover itself these flights were tested
hundreds of times in jpl's wind tunnel
and tens of thousands of times in
simulation but now now that they have to
keep up with the Rover they're flying
into the
unknown now flying the helicopter isn't
easy at its closest Mars is 56 million
km from Earth which means there's at
least a 6-minute roundtrip
Communications time delay which is way
longer than Ingenuity 2minute maximum
flight time so she has to fly
autonomously so what happens is the
pilot programs in a route and jinny does
the rest but to start JPL first needs to
know exactly where she's located you
might think that they would use GPS but
for GPS to work on Earth you need at
least 24 satellites for full coverage
and around Mars there are only seven
satellites total so Ingenuity can't use
this method so instead what she does is
far
simpler we have two cameras a forward
facing 13 megapixel camera and then the
one pointing down is the one that we
used to navigate the navigation camera
takes 30 black and white images per
second inu's computer analyzes the image
and identifies features on the surface
you can think of it sort of like an
optical Mouse like your Optical Mouse is
on the mouse pad it doesn't know where
on the mouse pad it is but when you move
to the right it knows you move to the
right because what it's doing is it's
looking at features on the surface of
the mouse pad and watching them move
under its field of Pew so Ingenuity is
essentially doing the same thing it's
looking at the surface it's picking out
features like rocks and other things and
between camera images is it says oh this
rock moved this way this thing over here
moved this way and from that you can
compute a transform to say my helicopter
was here and now it's here relative to
the image now this sounds good but the
method isn't 100%
reliable on flight six the first time
she leaves her testing area Ingenuity
detects an error 54 seconds into the
flight she starts wobbling wildly
tilting 20° at a time her emergency
alarms blare
[Applause]
we had black and white image black and
white image black and white image and we
had a color image come very closely to
where that black and white image
occurred in time this color camera was
added late in development leaving little
time for testing and during this flight
one of the images arrives at the exact
same moment as a black and white image
the system doesn't know what to do so it
drops the black and white image this
makes every following image one step
behind this means Ingenuity cameras are
giving her outdated information so even
when she's in the right spot the
computer thinks she's lagging behind and
pushes her forward so she overshoots
tilts too far and then has to
overcorrect in the other direction this
cycle repeats making her wobble worse in
a positive feedback loop now that is a
problem but it isn't fatal the desyncing
issue was like one camera frame off if
it had been more than that I I think you
could imagine that it might have death
spiral instead Jenny detects the problem
and is able to emergency land before it
gets too ugly while safely on the ground
JPL discovers the error and quickly
corrects it with a software patch it's a
close call but they recover over the
next dozen flights they keep up with the
Rover and support the mission that is
until Flight
[Music]
19 we were about to fly that 19th flight
and I got a phone call the afternoon
before basically saying there's a a dust
storm brewing uh near Jero
crater so we quickly cancel the flight
and so well we're just going to hunker
down and and see what
happens they brace for
impact it lasts 6 days with winds
gusting up to 20 m/ second that first
dust storm in the middle of fall in the
first first Martian year that we're on
the surface it clobbered
us but they make it
through nervously they try to make
contact and she survived she hasn't died
or toppled over but now they have a new
problem
dust dust on Mars is no joke I mean for
jinny there are two big problems first
dust is covering her solar panels
reducing Power by 18% and second it's
clogging her mechanical components we
went to go fly and when we went to
wiggle the servos they were actually
stuck they were kind of jammed from the
dust so that aborted the first attempt
at Flight
19 now GPL had anticipated both of these
problems but they hadn't had the time or
budget to fix them so for the first they
just have to accept that they have
reduced solar power and they adjust
their flight durations accordingly for
the second they find a workaround by
repeatedly wiggling the servos until the
joints clear so she's able to keep
flying albe it wounded and survival
isn't getting any easier see every
Martian night the temperature drops
precipitously my friend Alex from the
channel astram describes it
well with less atmosphere M became far
worse at retaining heat when the Surface
starts to cool there is no air to catch
the escaping warmth it is at the point
where if you were to stand on the
planet's equator during its warmest time
of the day your feet might feel 23 de C
while at your head it would be 0° C this
means between day and night Ma has some
intense temperature swings temperatures
there now range from highs of around 27°
C down to a freezing -
133° c at
night if you want to learn more more
about how this leads to entire planet
covering dust storms astram has a whole
video on the Martian
climate so these massive shifts in
temperature are happening all the time
but as jinny's Mission progresses Mars
gets farther away from the Sun and
enters the Martian winter so it gets
even colder at night which is a problem
many of inu's key electrical components
are hands soldered and big temperature
swings cause expansion and contraction
of this metal and so that can eventually
break these connections also inside the
batteries a liquid electrolyte solution
allows lithium ions to move between the
cathode and anode during charging and
discharging but if this solution freezes
JPL fears that the whole thing will stop
working entirely so what they do is keep
all the components sensitive to the cold
inside a warm box which has resistance
heaters that run during the night you
might spend 25 or 30% of your battery
flying and the other you know 60 to 75%
is all just staying warm at night the
problem is the colder it gets the harder
the heaters have to work and if they
can't keep up and the batteries cool too
much they become less efficient so they
Supply even less power to the heaters
performance can continue to degrade in a
vicious death
spiral on the morning of May 3rd the
team at JPL goes about a normal day they
check the data from the previous
downlink nothing they try pinging
Ingenuity still nothing have they
finally lost her did we just lose our
our $70 million helicopter on Mars is
this the end of the
mission we thought this was it so let's
just make sure before we close the door
on Ingenuity we've thought of
everything we just keep working through
it they run through all the possible
problems until they narrow it down to
just one the way she was designed jinny
has an alarm clock that wakes her up it
stays awake for 15 minutes if it doesn't
hear anything after 15 minutes it goes
back to sleep and it doesn't wake up
until the next alarm their hypothesis is
this if the lack of sunlight forced
Jenny to fully deplete her batteries
then during the night her heaters would
have stopped and she would have powered
off completely when the Sun rises as
long as her essential components still
function she may recharge enough to wake
up only now now her clock will have
reset so they run the calculations if
she's still alive based on when the sun
comes up she should be waking up at
11:45 a.m. Martian time that is not the
time they had been trying so they change
their search window and start calling
out to Jenny around when they expect her
to power up they send out ping after
ping until
finally she's alive
[Music]
they check to see whether everything is
still working and despite the components
in her warm box only being rated to 45°
they survived being completely Frozen
well all except for one the inclinometer
is dead the inclinometer is what lets
Ingenuity know her physical orientation
in 3D space before flight and that is
pretty essential for getting the right
heading you could imagine if you're off
and heading by 10° you could fly into a
mountain without the inclinometer there
is no way for her to fly so at first the
whole team is stumped but then they have
an idea because Ingenuity is made of
phone parts literally parts from phones
people carry around every day her
processor is from a Samsung Galaxy S5
and some of her sensors are from a
Google pixel 3 and these phones can do a
lot of the things that an inclinometer
can
do inside every smartphone are at least
three little Micro electromechanical
Systems aligned perpendicular to each
other like x y z at their core is a
small Mass suspended by flexible arms
they work like Springs and follow hooks
law FAL minus KX where force is
proportional to displacement the mass
also follows Newton's Second Law FAL ma
a if you combine these equations you get
a = - KX over M which links acceleration
and displacement surrounding the mass
are fixed arms when a voltage is applied
to the mass and arms they form a
capacitor where Epsilon and a stay
constant but as the mass moves the
distance between them changes with X
this Alters the capacitance which
becomes more noticeable with multiple
plates hence why they have so many
little Arms by measuring capacitance you
can determine displacement and since
displacement is proportional to
acceleration changes in capacitance
allow us to measure acceleration that's
why these devices are called
accelerometers and by integrating
acceleration over time you can work out
velocity and then position this is how
motion tracking works for screen
rotation gaming controls and step
counting if you add gyroscopes you get
an inertial measurement unit or IMU and
Ingenuity has the same IMU as the Google
pixel
3 so the team at JPL had an idea they
could reprogram the computer to use the
IMU to replace the inclinometer the in
ometer is really just accelerometers
that allows us to tell the initial
attitude of the vehicle in Rolling pitch
and the IMU also has accelerometers so
in principle it gives you some
information so from the clutches of
failure they get her running
again we got lucky in that like the one
instrument we could afford to lose was
the one that died but the IMU isn't
space grade in fact none of these
off-the-shelf parts are which means
they're vulnerable to cosmic rays on
Mars the thin atmosphere doesn't just
make it harder to fly it also means
cosmic rays reach the surface more
easily and a single cosmic ray can
strike a computer register and flip a
bit inside the computer which can lead
to some strange Behavior it even happens
here on Earth it once added 4,096
unaccounted votes to a candidate in a
Belgian election now on a martian
helicopter flipping the wrong bit at the
wrong time could mean losing control and
crashing so why doesn't that
happen if you asked somebody 10 years
ago can you fly the latest cell phone
processor they' be like no it'll last
like 2 days and you'll be dead right it
turns out that cosmic ray bit flips are
not as big a deal as NASA thought the
off-the-shelf components hold up way
better than they expected and this is an
important finding rather than going
through all of the development cost of
building up a processor from scratch to
be radiation in tolerant or finding is
you get a lot better bang for your buck
by just going and basically buying
batches of different processors and just
quing them that means throw them through
a radiation test campaign look at the
failure rates you know and figuring out
you hey this guy we don't know why but
for whatever reason this processor over
here is great it holds up so we'll fly
that now using these surprisingly robust
off-the-shelf Parts they survive the
rest of the winter but they're only
barely able to stay within the
communication range of the Rover spring
time came birds were chirping on Mars
talk about spring optimism right like
coming out of winter with the increased
sunlight they can now fully recharge and
return to their scientific Mission over
the next 41 flights they image craters
perseverance can't make it to they
capture stunning images of the Martian
Horizon from
above they conduct daring aerodynamic
tests and they begin to push the limits
they want to fly faster but the faster
they go the quicker features move across
the camera's field of view and the
vision navigation system just can't keep
up with that so JPL comes up with a
solution they fly higher then they can
expand the field of view which means
features will move more slowly through
frame so from an initial goal of a 10 m
altitude they go up to 24 M and as a
result they're able to go from flying at
2 m/ second all the way up to 10 m/
second we set speed records distance
records altitude records just everything
we could think of to push that flight
envelope on Ingenuity really make the
most of this once in a-lifetime
Opportunity of having a helicopter on
Mars everything is going swimmingly
jinny and perseverance have made it all
the way to netv valis a river Delta in
jezero Crater but on flight 71 there's a
new problem and it's worse than any of
the ones that came before now inu's only
scientific payload is a camera so so
she's taking hundreds of photos a day
and sending them to JPL and she's not
alone perseverance does the same
including this selfie with Ingenuity
honestly they're the most chronically
online Duo on Mars we always know
exactly where they are what they're up
to and they're constantly sharing photos
but really how different is that from us
I mean we spend most of our Lives online
constantly sharing data except in our
case that data doesn't just sit in a
NASA archive it gets bought sold and
used in ways we're not always aware of
that's why I've been using today's
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today I want to thank incog for
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now back to
Ingenuity so we just had this one final
thing to do we needed to cross this Sand
Dune and make it to bright angel that
RAB with the Rover so on 71 we basically
went up we were flying and then after
about 10 seconds of flying with degraded
navigation we went into an emergency
landing mode and sort of came down hard
they hail Jenny and luckily she's still
alive in the eror code they discover the
problem as she was flying over the dunes
there just weren't enough rocks or
landmarks for her camera to identify and
without those references she quick lost
track of her position and had to make an
emergency
landing it's similar to the camera issue
from flight 6 but this time there's no
software fix they check for structural
damage but surprisingly everything is
still
intact so they attempt another flight
this time going straight up to scan the
surroundings and then coming straight
back down simple we popped up took
pictures and then on the way back down
we hit the same problems we did on W
only this time it's
fatal perseverance drives over and
captures this image of her crash
site when we saw the blades broken when
we saw that first image after flight 72
that was heart-wrenching it was like no
there's there's no way this mission is
going to continue that was very
depressing so why because 71 was also a
crash landing for the same reason it was
you know the nav system was confused and
drove us into the ground but we came out
of that apparently unscathed and yet on
72 we self-destructed this is the first
air crash investigation on another
planet right yeah that's right first
aircraft on another planet and then the
first uh air crash investigation on
planet yeah they kind of go hand in
hand at the crash site they find
ingenuities blades scattered but not in
the way they expect we noticed something
interesting which is there was no blade
strike spot blades spinning this fast
when they hit the ground right they're
going to create a spray there's going to
be a pattern probably even visible from
orbit and we didn't see anything like
that so if the blades didn't strike the
ground then what happened so this is an
actual prototype blade from the
development phase this is essentially
identical to the blades on engineuity
it's a carbon fiber composite with a
foam core it's incredibly light if you
want to feel it yeah whoa that's CRA
that's like at least a quarter of what I
expected just looking at it it doesn't
feel
physical so why did they break well as
the blades spin the tips of the blades
Trace out a circle which you can think
of like a hula hoop if there's a force
up on the near side you might expect the
rotor to tilt immediately in this
direction but that is not actually what
happens see the blade isn't stationary
it's moving really fast so when you
apply this force it actually only moves
after that point so the maximum
displacement occurs 90° later so even
though we push up on the near side the
blades tilt up on the right and down on
the left this effect is called
procession and it's the same principle
that explains this spinning bike wheel
demonstration now Ingenuity has a second
set of blades that are moving in the
opposite direction which means that when
a force is applied each set of blades
experiences procession in the opposite
direction for the helicopter overall
these torqus cancel out but each
individual blade still flexes because of
that procession torque that results in a
stress concentration right about here
where that final reinforcement tapers
off and so if you had a procession based
failure you'd expect it to fail right
here and sure enough that's exactly
where you see it in the pictures you can
see sort of this jaggy place where the
blade tip just got ripped
off so that is what happened on flight
72 as J came down hard she hit a dune at
an angle the force was transmitted up
through the body of the helicopter and
this created A procession torque that
bent the rotors and they snapped right
where the reinforcement tapers down this
thing came down hard it didn't it didn't
destroy the landing gear it didn't break
the avionics it didn't kill the servos
the swash plates are all fine they're
all intact it's the rotors that's the we
link so that is the first thing they're
changing on the next generation of Mars
helicopter which is called Chopper you
had a chance to hold the Ingenuity blade
this is the is the next gen baby blade
it looks fairly similar with a couple of
key differences they reinforce the
blades to withstand the torqus caused by
hard Landings now they also have six
rotors instead of two which means
Chopper can hold a lot even carrying a
scientific payload of its own we've
developed now a very lightweight radio
that can communicate directly to orbit W
so we're a free bird when it comes to
exploring that's huge you were sort of
trying to Trail perseverance right and
now you can go anywhere yep we're our
own spacecraft in this blue box you can
shove about 5 kg of science payload and
bring it anywhere on the planet on Mars
you can fly 3 km per sole in a matter of
minutes that's really generated a lot of
excitement in the science
community so this is a fifth scale model
of Chopper it's really two systems so
this is our Chopper platform right this
is what's going to go on and explore the
the entire surface of Mars one day uh
that's the point of the concept but
underneath is a midair helicopter
delivery platform see Mars rovers all
need complex Sky cranes to land but a
helicopter is different it just needs a
platform to take off from so the idea is
we come down uh through the atmosphere
we have this jetp pack uh that we need
to slow us down to get us down to a
regime that is controllable so that we
can take off from that platform midair
and land under our own power for this it
needs Rockets 3 2
one
awesome you're envisioning like a future
of Aviation all over Mars as a primary
explorative capacity in my mind it's
absolutely going to happen just a matter
of time there there will be fleets
flying you know throughout Mars there
will be Airport on Mars one day uh and
we'll have aircraft the size of Chopper
more aircraft the size of Ingenuity and
even bigger than Chopper NASA is
thinking big thanks to Ingenuity a
project they once
doubted because jinny showed what is
possible in 1890 you had said I'm going
to fly it's like okay that kooky guy in
his garage he thinks he can fly he's
going to he's going to kill himself
right after the right Brothers it's like
oh okay yeah this is a thing that we're
going to do and so that's the change in
mentality that's occurred because of
Ingenuity that's why still sitting there
on the surface of Mars attached to the
underside of Ingenuity is a tiny scrap 1
square cm of muslin fabric it was taken
from the lower left wing of the first
airplane the right
flyer from the first flight on Earth to
the first flight on another planet from
inu's grave on Mars her spirit lives on
[Music]
except she isn't quite dead
yet she's acting as a weather station
now capturing photos every day capturing
temperature measurements every day
something no one would have ever
predicted before flight 72 that if
things don't go well we just still have
a functioning spacecraft so she's a tank
the team couldn't be more proud of what
ingenuities accomplished