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Physics and astronomy thread (1 Viewer)

Ingenuity then came back to its take-off spot, for a total flight time of 80 seconds.
Very cool, but why not get Ginny to land someplace else? Didn't want to risk it? Also I wonder what the on board? flight time is with the batteries onboard? Don't want to drain too much cuz of the stupid dust storms that can block out the sun necessary for solar recharging.
good question about the battery. IIRC, they chose this section because it was flat without much of a debris field... giving ginny it's best chance to do its thing without tripping. I think coming back to the same spot might be about having Percy filming it... so that they just have to set Percy up once to get the optimal shot...maybe? 

today's flight was also supposed to go faster than the previous two. hopefully that worked out. they say they'd only tested ginny's lateral flying a couple of feet on earth because they were doing it in a vacuum chamber. this was their first "real" flight of consequence and why the 2nd flight 5 meters each way was so important, if short.

 
I ordered a telescope in January - finally getting delivered tomorrow 🔭

Unfortunately, I think it is supposed to be pretty cloudy for the rest of the week :sadbanana:

 
It was scheduled to be longer, faster and involve more photos including while hovering at its turnaround point. 

At this point after the three successful flights, they've achieved their goals for future missions and are looking to push the envelope some.

 
they tried again with Ginny this morning. We should be finding out very soon if it worked.

Sounds like it was the same issue from before the first flight attempt- watchdog timer expiration not allowing it to transition to flight mode. 

Fingers crossed...

 
El Floppo said:
they tried again with Ginny this morning. We should be finding out very soon if it worked.

Sounds like it was the same issue from before the first flight attempt- watchdog timer expiration not allowing it to transition to flight mode. 

Fingers crossed...
SUCCESS!

they'll have images and hopefully some video later

 
I mentioned they had achieved their original mission goals after the third flight. This is an interesting and amazing shift in Ginny's goals... clearly the future of extraterrestrial missions if they can swing it.

“It's been riding the winds, it's been taking off great, all the engineering systems, the solar panel, the battery, the radio have all been working very well - everything has just been fantastic."

Now, Ingenuity will be helping out with the rover's science programme.

It will work with the Perseverance robot as it starts to investigate Jezero Crater, a region of Mars that was once a lake.

The rover will be looking for rock samples that it can study with its onboard instruments and tools. Its ultimate aim is to find signs of life.

In the helicopter's new operational phase, it will fly up to a kilometre ahead of the rover, scouting for promising geological features and exploring areas that Perseverance cannot reach.

It will also make digital elevation maps, helping scientists to better understand the terrain.

The hope is this will demonstrate how aerial mobility could help future missions.

The helicopter's fourth flight, which took place on Friday, begins the transition to the operational phase.

The plan was a 266m-round trip and for the helicopter to take 60 black-and-white images and five colour images, and Nasa has confirmed the helicopter flew further and faster than ever before.

This data will help the team to locate a new flight field, and on its next flight, in about a week's time, the helicopter will head there so the next stage of its mission can begin.

Nasa is hopeful the helicopter will perform well, but acknowledges the next phase will push the helicopter to its limits - it was only ever built to fly as a tech demo.

"We will now be flying over unsurveyed terrains and transfer to airfields that are not well characterised so there's a higher probability of a bad landing," explained MiMi Aung.

"We will be celebrating each day that ingenuity survives and operates beyond the original window."

 
I’m too lazy to read this whole thread, so apologies. My 12 yo daughter has shown some interest in astronomy.  I looked at some telescopes but don’t want to drop serious cash until I know she’s really serious.  Anyone have rec’d for binoculars for sky viewing?

 
Very cool, but why not get Ginny to land someplace else? 
NASA must read fbg...From space.com. I would think having Ginny and Percy work in tandem would be a huge boon for the logistics of moving Percy around and scouting/fine-tuning it's mission.

Ingenuity is scheduled to make its fifth Martian flight today (May 7), a jaunt that will be unlike anything the 4-lb. (1.8 kilograms) chopper has attempted so far.

If all goes according to plan, Ingenuity will lift off at 3:26 p.m. EDT (1926 GMT), climb to an altitude of 16 feet (5 meters) and then head south for 423 feet (129 m), following the same path it took a week ago on the 87-second flight number four. We won't know how things went for a while, though; data from Ingenuity isn't expected to start coming down to Earth until around 7:30 p.m. EDT (2330 GMT).

"But instead of turning around and heading back, we'll actually climb to a new height record of 33 feet (10 meters), where we can take some color (as well as black-and-white) images of the area," Josh Ravich, Ingenuity mechanical engineering lead at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, wrote in a blog post yesterday (May 6).

"After a total flight time of about 110 seconds, Ingenuity will land, completing its first one-way trip," Ravich added. "When it touches down at its new location, we will embark on a new demonstration phase — one where we exhibit what this new technology can do to assist other missions down the road."

 
They released a video of ginny looking down from the last flight...I'm spoiled and find it not so interesting looking at its shadow moving over nondescript terrain.

But I just found this video from percy that includes audio. Was really hoping they'd start combining the two. I haven't heard it yet, because work, but can't wait.

 
Glad they are moving past the "technology demonstration" phase and into something meaningful that can help Percy navigate better and explore more interesting phenomena.

You know I could almost see the inverse where the main vehicle is a big rotorcraft, which releases small "crawlers" to do science on the rocks.

 
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I’m too lazy to read this whole thread, so apologies. My 12 yo daughter has shown some interest in astronomy.  I looked at some telescopes but don’t want to drop serious cash until I know she’s really serious.  Anyone have rec’d for binoculars for sky viewing?
Can any of you telescope, night vision mutants help Andrew out here?

 
NASA must read fbg...From space.com. I would think having Ginny and Percy work in tandem would be a huge boon for the logistics of moving Percy around and scouting/fine-tuning it's mission.

Ingenuity is scheduled to make its fifth Martian flight today (May 7), a jaunt that will be unlike anything the 4-lb. (1.8 kilograms) chopper has attempted so far.

If all goes according to plan, Ingenuity will lift off at 3:26 p.m. EDT (1926 GMT), climb to an altitude of 16 feet (5 meters) and then head south for 423 feet (129 m), following the same path it took a week ago on the 87-second flight number four. We won't know how things went for a while, though; data from Ingenuity isn't expected to start coming down to Earth until around 7:30 p.m. EDT (2330 GMT).

"But instead of turning around and heading back, we'll actually climb to a new height record of 33 feet (10 meters), where we can take some color (as well as black-and-white) images of the area," Josh Ravich, Ingenuity mechanical engineering lead at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, wrote in a blog post yesterday (May 6).

"After a total flight time of about 110 seconds, Ingenuity will land, completing its first one-way trip," Ravich added. "When it touches down at its new location, we will embark on a new demonstration phase — one where we exhibit what this new technology can do to assist other missions down the road."


Flight #5 was a success!

Image taken from Percy

 
I’m too lazy to read this whole thread, so apologies. My 12 yo daughter has shown some interest in astronomy.  I looked at some telescopes but don’t want to drop serious cash until I know she’s really serious.  Anyone have rec’d for binoculars for sky viewing?
Can any of you telescope, night vision mutants help Andrew out here?
I skipped the binocular stage, and went straight to a telescope.

But here are a few links:

https://www.space.com/26021-best-binoculars.html

https://www.space.com/27404-binoculars-buying-guide.html

https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-equipment/binoculars-for-astronomy/

 
I’m too lazy to read this whole thread, so apologies. My 12 yo daughter has shown some interest in astronomy.  I looked at some telescopes but don’t want to drop serious cash until I know she’s really serious.  Anyone have rec’d for binoculars for sky viewing?
I'm by no means a seasoned watcher, but we took the same approach, getting a pair of nice binoculars so we can gauge the level of interest. Not having anything else to compare to, they are amazing!

https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00008Y0VN/

 
El Floppo said:
What can you see with those?

Are you in a low light pollution area? 
Unfortunately, there's no chance you or I will ever see the stars from where we live.  I would be surprised if even a telescope would help enough.

 
El Floppo said:
What can you see with those?

Are you in a low light pollution area? 
I've broken them out twice now... Once for a full moon, and once for the Jupiter/Saturn conjunction. They are quite heavy for binoculars, but I had them on a medium tripod and it felt like a low-powered telescope. The field of view is much better than a telescope of course, but the detail they capture is impressive. They would be bulky to handle off of the tripod, but usable that way too. 

I'm in the North Carolina suburbs. According to https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/ my house is a Bortle class 6 location.

 
I know the Ingenuity team experienced "7 minutes of terror", but that was without the added fear of being disappeared if the landing is a failure...

Chinese scientists must be off-the-charts stressed right now.
Read this three times before I understood exactly who was getting disappeared. Thought you meant the lander/rover.

Anybody know when the 7 minutes happens?

 
Read this three times before I understood exactly who was getting disappeared. Thought you meant the lander/rover.

Anybody know when the 7 minutes happens?
I read that it's scheduled for tonight at 7:11pm EDT.

ETA:  Given the Chinese, though, I imagine we won't hear about it then.  And might not hear about it for a while if it fails.  

 
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I read that it's scheduled for tonight at 7:11pm EDT.

ETA:  Given the Chinese, though, I imagine we won't hear about it then.  And might not hear about it for a while if it fails.  
The lander carrying China's first Mars rover #Zhurong has touched down on the Red Planet, the China National Space Administration confirmed on Saturday morning. Zhurong has been designed to operate in the Red Planet for at least 90 Martian days.

more: https://t.co/avaUv4mvgI https://t.co/cQzQG6U96B

 
BEIJING (Reuters) -An uncrewed Chinese spacecraft successfully landed on the surface of Mars on Saturday, state news agency Xinhua reported, making China the second space-faring nation after the United States to land on the Red Planet.

The Tianwen-1 spacecraft landed on a site on the Southern Utopia Plain, "leaving a Chinese footprint on Mars for the first time," Xinhua said.

A rover, named Zhurong, will now survey the landing site before departing from its platform to conduct inspections.

Tianwen-1, or "Questions to Heaven", after a Chinese poem written two millennia ago, is China's first independent mission to Mars. A probe co-launched with Russia in 2011 failed to leave the Earth's orbit.

The 5-tonne spacecraft blasted off from the southern Chinese island of Hainan in July last year, launched by the powerful Long March 5 rocket.

After more than six months in transit, Tianwen-1 reached the Red Planet in February where it had been in orbit since

 

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