Even Mars has a flying drone...

[sidd finch]

That is pretty amazing. Such a cool idea too. I look forward to seeing it when it goes for its maximum flight and the video it sends back.

Sidd

[Steve Grisetti]

One issue almost no one has talked about is that Mars is about 180 million miles away -- which means that a radio signal takes between 5 and 20 minutes to reach Mars. Which has got to make controlling that drone especially hard!

[sidd finch]

What I read Steve is that all the flight is sent to the rover and the rover controls the drone. I think it has some AI so that it can attenuate the drone as it flys.

Sidd

[Steve Grisetti]

Thanks, Sidd. That makes sense.

I just remember when remote control cameras were set up on the moon the people controlling them from Earth had to consider the three-second delay between their movement of the controller and the cameras' movements.

[Chris B]

As I understand it Ingenuity flies itself. The commands are sent via the rover (go to this altitude etc.) but the actual flying is handled by the helicopter. It has a Snapdragon 801 processor on board (that powered the Samsung Galaxy S5) and the code that runs it is here: https://nasa.github.io/fprime/

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

[conspiracy theory warning on]

Giant vacuum chamber? Piffle! They flew the prototype to Mars and recorded it there before returning the video to Earth on the starship Enterprise.

[/conspiracy theory warning off]

Nah! Wrong again. They have developed a mini robotic man and he flies it on directions from NASA.

[sidd finch]

So John you're saying if I can get my self to Mars I could get a free drone and a cool RC car??? When's the next flight?

Well however it got there I hope they registered the drone with the FCC and printed the reg number on the aircraft...

Sidd

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

No Sidd. You would be far too big to fit into the drone, let alone drive the car! Do try and keep up!

[sidd finch]

John I take that as a no! Sometimes reality has a way of sneaking up on me... lol

Sidd

[John 'twosheds' McDonald]

For all of my poor jokes about this I have to say that it is a really outstanding achievement. This from the BBC news website:-

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-56882257