NASA engineers plan to replace the inclinometer with the inertial measurement unit.
. Ingenuity has, so far, far exceeded design expectations, adding 28 flights under its belt and beaming back to Earth crucial data for the exploration of the Red Planet. Now, however, the chopper has come across an issue: it has a dead sensor,"Over the past several sols on Mars, the Ingenuity team has been busy recommissioning the helicopter for flight, going through a series of activities that include preflight checkout of sensors and actuators and a high-speed spin of the rotor.
"Ingenuity’s sensor suite provides some redundancy when it comes to sensing attitude on the ground. The IMU contains accelerometers, which – just like the accelerometers within the inclinometer – can be used to estimate the initial attitude. Unlike the inclinometer, the IMU is not purpose-built for sensing static orientation, so its initial attitude estimates will generally be somewhat less accurate.
What's even better is that NASA's engineers had anticipated that such a situation could arise and had prepared the required software patch prior to last year’s arrival on Mars and kept it on the shelf for this eventuality. GET YOUR DAILY NEWS DIRECTLY IN YOUR INBOX
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