6 Months on Mars: Perseverance

[Music] in this episode ingenuity narrowly survives a routine flight spots danger lurking ahead and breaks its own records meanwhile perseverance travels to an area which could hold clues about ancient life captures a huge dust storm and encounters a mishap so grave it threatens to derail the main objective of the mission this video is part of a new series where we follow along with the perseverance rover if you haven't seen the first episode three months on mars then you should watch that first remember to subscribe to keep following along with the rover in future episodes in preparation for its main objective gathering samples of the planet to later return to earth perseverance practices its coordination this series of images shows the first time the arm was docked with the rover's internal sampling mechanism as the rover is now busy with mission objectives it no longer has the time to record flights of its partner ingenuity however not recording the sixth flight would become a missed opportunity for a valuable look into how the helicopter safety systems perform as this video of the sixth flight shows taken by the helicopter itself we can see that ingenuity is wildly tilting back and forth after some investigation the flight team concludes this wild tilting was caused by an issue with the camera there are two primary inputs for the helicopter's autonomous flying one is a momentum sensor and the other is an algorithm that relies on images from the camera 500 images are fed into the algorithm every second all with time stamps the issue occurred because the camera failed to take just one image meaning all the images taken afterward contained inaccurate time stamps luckily the helicopter stability system has a built-in margin of safety and so still powered through to a soft landing despite the issue despite the troubles ingenuity manages to capture this color image looking toward a site of interest the team has named saita the navajo word for among the sand the team believes that the capture of the 13 megapixel color image could have contributed to the flight issue and so will not order the helicopter to take any more until the issue is fully resolved meanwhile perseverance is busy looking at this rock which has gained a rather unfortunate nickname we won't repeat it but think of a long-running joke related to the planet uranus on june 1st perseverance and ingenuity celebrate 100 sauls on mars here are some images from the day including the martian midday sun the rover team plans out a more detailed route for perseverance first heading south to a site of interest called saita before retracing back north skipping around the edge of two craters and heading to the most alluring site nicknamed the three forks this area is where an ancient river spilled into an ancient lake with such a long drive ahead nasa releases more information about how the rover navigates autonomously this video shows what the rover sees when navigating small parts of the terrain reveal themselves as they move into range on june 8th ingenuity prepares for its seventh flight with the camera issue from the previous flight still freshly in mind it's a nerve-wracking moment fortunately the issue doesn't occur this time and the helicopter performs a clean flight the rover stops to take a quick look at this rock which some scientists believe has similarities to volcanic rock back here on earth however volcanic rocks are not what the rover is here for so perseverance carefully moves on searching for sedimentary rocks another saw on mars and another plume of dust is spotted however what the rover captures next is truly incredible a vast cloud of dust sweeps across the landscape this animation is made from just three images taken over a time period of 29 seconds so in reality the dust is moving much slower to be precise this animation is around 19 times normal speed here's a slightly smoother view at five times the real speed on sol 120 ingenuity takes to the skies yet again to follow along with the rover the helicopter must now keep making regular flights traversing the landscape the rover will now need to go into auto nav mode to speed up the drive to sayata the team decides to test the new autonav software sending the rover in a direction where they have spotted an obstacle this series of images shows how the rover navigates itself through the obstacles successfully the rover arrives at the site labeled sayata in perseverance turns its camera around to see the long tracks that is left behind on sol 133 ingenuity prepares for its ninth flight the helicopter team applies an update to the autonomous flight software to solve the issues seen in flight 6 and the helicopter can now take color images once again ingenuity flies for two minutes and 26 seconds the longest flight yet it flies across the whole say it to area and takes lots of color images the features in this image taken during the ninth flight have been named raised ridges and scientists desperately want to explore this portion of sayata with the rover they belong to a fracture system which often serve as pathways for fluid to flow underground in this image from ingenuity the rover drivers spot something terrifying sand dunes if they were to drive slightly downhill into one of these dunes the rover could become stuck trapped on the surface of mars with no one around to help in this image bedrock can be seen toward the bottom slightly exposed among the dunes this area is also too risky for the rover to visit thanks to ingenuity however we can at least see this area in some detail after a little more driving the rover looks toward a site which has been given the most fitting nickname yet this area known as cratered floor fractured roof is where the rover will attempt to take its first sample the rover reaches out to touch the rocks nearby these rocks are of the same type of which it will take its sample this is the exact spot where the rover will hunt for a suitable sample meanwhile ingenuity performs its 10th flight it captures another view of the raised ridges site perseverance reaches the target site for its first sample this will be the rover's office on mars for a few weeks the sample caching system must undergo some testing before use ingenuity flies again this time capturing the perseverance rover from 39 feet in the air can you spot it the rover is hard at work in its office making sure to get the first sampling attempt right first its arm scours the rock it will attempt to sample this is to check what's underneath the surface to ensure that the drill is not damaged on august 6th the rover successfully drills into the surface the sample will be passed to the internal unit for inspection although the drilling went well there appears to be no sample in the tube the rover team investigates the issue perseverance zaps the sample spot to determine what caused this rock to vanish on august the 11th the team at nasa determines that the rock was too crumbly and therefore broke into fine dust rather than producing an intact core luckily the rover has more than 40 attempts remaining we cannot wait to see what the rover will discover in the next three months the good news is if you happen to be from the future you might not have to wait click here to see the next episode thanks for watching elder fox remember to subscribe and hit the bell to keep up with the latest discoveries

Channel: ElderFox Documentaries

Views: 891,099

Keywords: elderfox, elder fox, elderfox documentaries, perseverance rover, persavarance rover, ingenuity, ingenuity helicopter

Id: PSIwnOKJXuw

Length: 9min 2sec (542 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 18 2021