Cool! I wonder why balloons have not been used much on other planets? Is it the weight of the gas? The USSR had the the Vega 1 and 2 balloons on Venus, but presumably further missions could be pretty useful for studying planetary atmospheres, even for gas giants.
First Flight of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter [video]
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Re: First Flight of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter [video]
#22Awesome! Well deserved congratulations all round to the team! Dare mighty things indeed. Only negative thing I can think of is that I really hope the Perseverance rover has better video onboard just not transmitted yet. Maybe they will release it during the press conference later today. The one they showed was a little clipped. It had spin up. then it sort of cuts to the mid flight and then cuts to the spin down... a…
Yes, higher res, higher fps is coming, but will take a couple of days.
I hope the landing was smooth and we can look forward to lots of aerial photos from Ingenuity.
Re: First Flight of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter [video]
#23What a treat! A very slow and quiet drama, presented by a tight group, a team, of geeks.
Appreciated by everyone watching.
Looking forward to more.
Re: First Flight of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter [video]
#24Countdown to when the take off is supposed to happen sorely missing.
A little video editing would be nice.
It's almost like NASA doesn't realize many people watch these videos.
I like watching behind the sceen stuff, but I also want NASA to come off in the best light.
The video had a production value of a subpar PBS late night video.
NASA has a duty to promote the agency too. There's a PR value to everything, especially when using public money.
(I want to give NASA more funds some days. Other days, I would rather give it to Musk. I'm not sure anymore who will use the money better.)
Re: First Flight of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter [video]
#25Funny how there seems to be neither dust on landing or take-off.
It may have something to do with the fact that Mars' atmosphere is very, very thin (I think they mentioned it's 1% density of Earth's), so there are much fewer particles hitting the ground and pushing the dust, compared to e.g. a small hobby drone taking off here on Earth.
I'm sure there was some dust thrown up in the air, but probably not enough to be seen against the background.
Re: First Flight of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter [video]
#26Why are they all in prison?
Re: First Flight of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter [video]
#27Why does the downlink operator have what appears to be Github open? He seems to be carefully monitoring it. Is raw data going straight to Github?
Seems like they are using a github issue to stream the data to, probably through a bot of some kind, I cannot find the issue where it is going on so I imagine it is on a private instance
https://youtu.be/p1KolyCqICI?t=1958
Here it says "Enterprise".
Re: First Flight of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter [video]
#28Why does the downlink operator have what appears to be Github open? He seems to be carefully monitoring it. Is raw data going straight to Github?
I'm also curious to understand more about how Git comes into play here.
Re: First Flight of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter [video]
#29Cool! I wonder why balloons have not been used much on other planets? Is it the weight of the gas? The USSR had the the Vega 1 and 2 balloons on Venus, but presumably further missions could be pretty useful for studying planetary atmospheres, even for gas giants.
The gas has to be lighter than the atmosphere of the target planet. For planets with very thin atmospheres or planets with mostly-hydrogen atmospheres, that is hard to achieve. That leaves basically Venus and maybe Titan?
Re: First Flight of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter [video]
#30Cool! I wonder why balloons have not been used much on other planets? Is it the weight of the gas? The USSR had the the Vega 1 and 2 balloons on Venus, but presumably further missions could be pretty useful for studying planetary atmospheres, even for gas giants.
The gas has to be lighter than the atmosphere of the target planet. For planets with very thin atmospheres or planets with mostly-hydrogen atmospheres, that is hard to achieve. That leaves basically Venus and maybe Titan?
Of course! Presumably you could use heated gases in the gas giants (like hot air balloons). I found this rather old JPL page which suggests it could be possible: https://www2.jpl.nasa.gov/adv_tech/balloons/outer_jupisat.ht...