[HN Gopher] NASA loses contact with Ingenuity Mars helicopter
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NASA loses contact with Ingenuity Mars helicopter
Author : basementcat
Score : 113 points
Date : 2024-01-20 18:35 UTC (4 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.space.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.space.com)
| throwup238 wrote:
| Run! Go! Get to the choppa, Perseverance!
|
| I've been saving that one for _years_.
| chiph wrote:
| They should definitely drive the rover to see what happened.
|
| Question: Can Ingenuity autorotate to a landing in the Martian
| atmosphere?
| beej71 wrote:
| I'd bet no, given how thin the atmosphere is and how fast they
| have to spin the rotors to stay aloft.
| dredmorbius wrote:
| From TFA:
|
| _" Perseverance is currently out of line-of-sight with
| Ingenuity, but the team could consider driving closer for a
| visual inspection," NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in
| Southern California, which manages both robots' missions, said
| via X on Friday._
|
| _Close_ inspection may not be advisable due to difficult
| terrain:
|
| <https://mastodon.social/@65dBnoise/111789132803382896>
| zokier wrote:
| There seems to be some spots almost directly south
| (-southeast) from the landing site (300-400m away maybe?)
| that look like they would be reachable without descending
| down to the riverbed and ripples. And I think that's the
| general direction Percy is going towards anyways (mostly
| west), so it wouldn't even be a huge detour to go check it
| out. I'd guess it would be mostly matter of how good of a
| path would be available there, but eyeballing it seems
| relatively benign.
| tedivm wrote:
| This is pretty sad but also pretty amazing. The original plan was
| for five flights of around 90 seconds each, and it looks like it
| finally failed on flight 72 with a total from all flights of two
| hours, eight minutes and eighteen seconds of flight time. All of
| this in an extremely thin atmosphere.
| roughly wrote:
| NASA's got a history of their rovers overperforming like this.
| Between this and Webb, it's hard to argue they're not the best
| out there.
| jasonpeacock wrote:
| It's less about being the best (no criticism of NASA) but
| rather engineering decisions to _guarantee_ the planned
| mission, which means you over-engineer and thus get extra
| performance/reliability. You're not willing to accept the
| statistical risk that may end a mission early.
| roughly wrote:
| I agree that it's not strictly that NASA engineers are
| better engineers, but I do think there's part of this
| that's both cultural and becomes actual capability - I
| think even if you gave most engineering organizations the
| budget and mandate that NASA has, they still wouldn't be
| able to pull off something like Webb because they don't
| have the practice of it*. Capacity both builds and
| atrophies over time, and most places don't work to that
| standard often enough to maintain the capability to do so
| even if they wanted to.
|
| (*I don't necessarily mean the practice of shooting a
| rocket into space and launching a telescope, but the
| ability to build an object that can perform that exactly to
| its specifications under those kinds of circumstances.)
| falserum wrote:
| Mostly, with any endeavour, you never start in advanced
| state, you have basic solution, then refine and grow it.
| I guess formula would be: tech skills x organisational
| quality x budget x iterations already under the belt. Any
| of these factors can bring down the total result to zero.
| Not an easy task trying to control all of these.
|
| Nasa, congrats on successful mission, which now ended.
| rrdharan wrote:
| > with any [E]ndeavour
|
| I see what you did there.
| nordsieck wrote:
| > I think even if you gave most engineering organizations
| the budget and mandate that NASA has, they still wouldn't
| be able to pull off something like Webb because they
| don't have the practice of it
|
| IMO, Webb is a bad example. It was super over budget,
| late, and experienced a litany of problems.
|
| In contrast, most un-manned NASA projects are roughly on
| budget and generally have few issues. And even the ones
| that do, NASA often figures out how to correct them like
| the Hubble telescope.
| adastra22 wrote:
| > In contrast, most un-manned NASA projects are roughly
| on budget and generally have few issues.
|
| This is simply not true. Maybe for some of the smallest
| Discovery or New Frontiers missions, but then those
| aren't actually built by NASA/JPL.
|
| Mars Sample Return is also famously insanely late and
| over budget, and so have been most flagship missions.
| superjan wrote:
| I speculate that beyond that, extra longevity can also be
| used to increase your budget. If you plan for six months
| operations, you have a lower mission budget. They won't
| shut you down after six months as long the device is still
| working.
| alentred wrote:
| I am in absolute awe of the results of research and
| engineering at NASA and many other space agencies for that
| matter. Nevertheless, I wonder: how much of the
| overperformance is in fact about playing it down in the first
| place?
|
| For example, what requirements for the Ingenuity helicopter
| were set for the engineers? Five flights or a 100 of flights?
| jdewerd wrote:
| Definitely a substantial portion of it, but we should be
| far more scandalized by the damage your typical runaway
| hype machine does to otherwise brilliant achievements than
| by NASA's successful efforts to wrangle expectations.
| edf13 wrote:
| Under promise, over deliver... that's the smart engineering
| way.
| The_Colonel wrote:
| No, it's not. As the other commenter nicely explained, this
| is mostly a byproduct of a very, very low tolerance of
| failure and extremely difficult conditions, like the
| impossibility to test it beforehand in the real
| environment.
|
| Under promise, overdeliver, is a nice way to say that
| you're dishonest with the client. The fact you can
| overdeliver means you're making some trade-offs elsewhere,
| e.g. in design/production price, time, weight or somewhere
| else.
|
| Overdelivering is a nice byproduct, but it shouldn't be the
| goal.
| lttlrck wrote:
| When I see it used it's as a device to set expectations
| when there are so many variables at play that any promise
| or commitment would be foolish, lead to disappointment
| with no upside. And that's how I'd interpret it here too.
|
| It has nothing to do with dishonesty. Though I have no
| doubt that it might be used that way, that's fraudulent
| and a whole different ball-game commercially.
| giantrobot wrote:
| It's not overperforming per se. NASA spacecraft/probes have
| primary, secondary, and auxiliary missions. Everything on the
| probe is designed and built with an eye to being able to
| complete secondary and auxiliary missions but the guarantee
| (insofar as anything can be) is the probe can accomplish its
| primary mission.
|
| Unfortunately this leads to uninformed reporters to make
| stupid claims like "a probe only designed to last 90
| days...". There's no self destruct or planned obsolescence in
| NASA probes. They don't have an egg timer set to 90 days and
| then explode.
|
| The probes are _designed_ to last at least as long as the
| ability for their consumables /power supply lasts. Consider
| the stresses of launch, transit through space, and
| insertion/landing are way worse than day to day conditions
| for a lot of probes. If they can survive all of that rolling
| around a desert is relatively easy (in comparison). If
| Ingenuity made one successful flight there was little reason
| it couldn't make more so long as it had the appropriate power
| available and the Martian Space Defense didn't shoot it down.
|
| Ingenuity didn't overperform, it performed according to its
| actual design and construction. It only overperformed
| misinformed media expectations.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > this leads to uninformed reporters to make stupid claims
| like "a probe only designed to last 90 days...".
|
| C'mon let's not blame the reporters. NASA pushes this line
| - why do think everyone repeats it, using the same language
| almost every time? You can even see it here on HN.
| dotnet00 wrote:
| It comes down to the fact that a poorly educated public and a
| ruling class of parasites has made it so NASA has negative
| room for failure. If they don't completely overperform on
| everything, someone will get dragged before Congress or into
| a hitpiece, potentially canceling other projects.
|
| Just recently we had a former NASA administrator testifying
| to a House subcommittee that the entire private space push
| was a failure and that all the contracts should be cancelled
| to restart Artemis with the usual SLS-style corruption.
| gumby wrote:
| > It comes down to the fact that a poorly educated public
| and a ruling class of parasites has made it so NASA has
| negative room for failure.
|
| Both basically true yet overdone. Fundamentally the US has
| an extremely strong punitive blame culture. Too strong, in
| that it is a distraction, a spectacle, and inhibits
| resolution of an actual problem, if one even exists. I
| don't mean this just in government: it's a fundamental part
| of the American _Weltanschauung_ , one oddly rarely
| discussed. It seems to be so fundamental that it's simply
| taken as a given, like the old "fish doesn't know it's wet"
| metaphor.
|
| FAA is a good example of an organization that implements an
| opposite approach: crash investigations follow a "what
| happened so we can address it, not punish" in air crashes,
| sometimes causing people to complain that "nobody was
| punished." But without the threat of punishment people are
| more willing to speak freely, so that hardware or
| procedures that need changing can actually change.
| ordu wrote:
| I don't know about USA politics to have an opinion on the
| matter, so I'd rather believe you assesment. But I want
| to add another point of data. Or rather point of view
| from outside.
|
| My experience of communication and collaboration with
| individual Americans points to the opposite direction.
| They are focused on a problem solving, not on a blame
| assignment. I can compare with my fellow Russians, I
| can't play games with them, because they kill all the fun
| looking for someone to blame.
|
| But at the same time, if we take a look at our Russian
| politicians... If they even look for someone to blame,
| they look for a blatant scapegoat.
|
| So, I mean, it seems like a complete reverse. Probably it
| is a coincidence or a result of a flawed methodology, but
| still...
| panick21_ wrote:
| > Fundamentally the US has an extremely strong punitive
| blame culture.
|
| Unless its about people in cars murdering people.
|
| > Too strong, in that it is a distraction, a spectacle,
| and inhibits resolution of an actual problem, if one even
| exists
|
| With cars the blame isn't that strong and it still
| inhibits solving the real problem.
|
| > what happened so we can address it, not punish
|
| I agree that addressing issue is first most important.
| But we should also hold people accountable too.
| gumby wrote:
| > > Fundamentally the US has an extremely strong punitive
| blame culture.
|
| > Unless its about people in cars murdering people.
|
| Sadly I disagree. Blame is almost inevitably
| assigned...to the victim. In NYC if you drive a truck you
| can flatten cyclists with impunity because the consensus
| is always that it was the cyclist's own fault.
|
| >> what happened so we can address it, not punish
|
| > I agree that addressing issue is first most important.
| But we should also hold people accountable too.
|
| What we need is for motor vehicles to stop crushing the
| innocent. That's what I mean when I talk about punishment
| as a distraction.
| rufus_foreman wrote:
| Underpromise, overdeliver.
| echelon wrote:
| Five nines engineering.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| While I think NASA is the most incredible organization in human
| history, be wary of simple underpromising-and-overdelivering:
|
| If everything they build lasts longer than expected, not only
| are they giving bad estimates (which perverts allocation of
| resources), they are way too smart and experienced to be doing
| it unintentionally.
|
| Now if Ford Motor underpromised on your car, telling you it
| would last 2 years, you wouldn't buy it in the first place -
| you'd never find out that it really lasts 10 years. But I
| suspect NASA gets away with it because everyone is blown away
| by even the underpromised result - helicopters on Mars, holy
| sh-! - and also nobody has experience with how long Martian
| helicopters typically fly.
| tracerbulletx wrote:
| Or the estimates are based around guaranteeing a high
| statistical chance they hit the estimate which is perfectly
| fine to do.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Yes, same thing - and I think we can assume that NASA has
| people smart enough to know it's the same thing.
| Buttons840 wrote:
| Yeah, I've often wished organizations I've worked for would
| define what an "estimate" is. Do they want an estimate I
| think there's a 50% chance we'll hit, or do they want an
| estimate I think there's a 99% chance we'll hit? In my
| experience they want the 50% estimate and expect us to hit
| that estimate 99% of the time.
| bryanlarsen wrote:
| A 99% chance of lasting 5 flights is likely the same build as
| a 50% chance of lasting 72.
|
| OTOH there is approximately 0% chance a Ford is going to last
| 10 years without any maintenance or repairs.
| gizmo686 wrote:
| They never said the helicopter would break down after 5
| flights. They said it was designed for 5 flights. Shipping it
| to Mars is expensive and slow, so they build in a lot of
| margin to increase the odds that they meet the requirements.
|
| Take a much more common example: expiration dates. A product
| going bad before its expiration date is an issue. Potential a
| massive one that could kill people. A product that remains in
| good condition after its expiration date is fine. As a
| result, expiration dates almost always occur far before the
| product actually expires.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| > They never said the helicopter would break down after 5
| flights. They said it was designed for 5 flights.
|
| That is salesperson talk. NASA has been doing public
| communication half a century too, and they know what people
| will take from it.
| sitharus wrote:
| It's more like Ford sell you a car that's guaranteed to have
| no breakdowns or need oil changes for the first two years. It
| might run a lot longer, but you they only promise two years
| so you plan to use it for that long.
|
| If it broke in those two years you'd be very upset, but if it
| does last longer that's a bonus.
| duxup wrote:
| >be wary of simple underpromising-and-overdelivering
|
| Is that actually the case when it comes to the helicopter in
| question?
| jncfhnb wrote:
| It's kind of hard to imagine a river without life. Life seems so
| quintessential to the mental image of a river.
| KyleBerezin wrote:
| Check out photos of the Onyx river in Antartica.
| robotnikman wrote:
| Its surprising how long those electronics lasted considering they
| were just regular off the shelf components and not rad-hardened
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Why wouldn't they use better than off-the-shelf components for
| job like this one? That doesn't seem like a money-saving
| decision.
| anigbrowl wrote:
| COTS FTW
|
| There's a big argument going on in military procurement right
| now about the high $ state of the art drones vs cheap &
| adequate.
| roughly wrote:
| Somehow I forgot we're flying a helicopter on Mars. For all the
| other bullshit we do as a species, we do get up to some pretty
| neat stuff, too.
| Loughla wrote:
| It's astounding to me that we're capable of flying a remote
| vehicle on a literally other planet, but we also kill each
| other in large numbers over whose god is correct.
|
| Genuinely astounding to me, and slightly disappointing.
| Mountain_Skies wrote:
| We kill for lots of reasons, some as trivial as wanting the
| pocket change another person has on them.
| c22 wrote:
| No doubt someday we'll be killing people on other planets
| with remote vehicles.
| OmarShehata wrote:
| "killing each other over whose god is correct" is a profound
| misunderstanding of humanity. That's not why humans kill each
| other now, or in any time in history. It is and always has
| been simple & rational game theory: fear of the other tribe
| killing you for your resources, or just simply because
| they're afraid you might kill them for _their_ resources.
|
| For example, this is (one of) the core reasons of why peace
| in Israel/Palestine is so hard (each side fears accepting
| sovereignty of the other side means they will continue to
| encroach and wipe them out).
|
| Humans are pretty clever and ingenious at all levels
| wolverine876 wrote:
| That's true sometimes, but sometimes people just want to
| take what their neighbors have. Russia's government faced
| no risk of Ukraine attacking, or NATO for that matter. They
| just wanted Ukraine.
| wolverine876 wrote:
| Remind me why we are killing each other? Is it for survival?
|
| OT: We know everything we need to survive and prosper very
| well - imperfectly, but with margin of error to spare,
| including capable political systems. The people still killing
| are just criminals who want to steal and murder.
| squarefoot wrote:
| Could be worth plotting a chart that shows how many of those
| who kill over some deity related reasons could also be part
| of those who design, build and operate remote vehicles on
| another planet, and the other way around.
| dontupvoteme wrote:
| I forgot which probe and celestial objects it was, but at one
| point NASA was investigating a moon around Jupiter or Saturn,
| thought about dumping it there for nice photos (it was out of
| fuel iirc) and then they realized that it might have life on
| it.
|
| So they intentionally crashed it into the planet instead as to
| not potentially contaminate said moon - possibly our first
| implementation of the prime directive!
| dotnet00 wrote:
| We did that with Cassini on Saturn, and we intend to do that
| with Juno on Jupiter.
|
| But, on the other hand, while measures are taken to ensure
| that spacecraft headed to other bodies are not contaminated,
| we've also found that life still often manages to find a way.
| So I thibk the various landings on Mars, and the lander on
| Titan (plus the quadcopter heading there later this decade)
| are somewhat likely to have brought along some extremely
| resilient (but dormant) life anyway.
| ChrisBland wrote:
| It has lost contact before and come back online. Sometimes the
| communications signals can get blocked, expect the rover to more
| closer to get a visual and attempt to establish contact. If the
| helicopter lost signal it goes into an auto land mode similar to
| what drones do when they lose signal.
| NooneAtAll3 wrote:
| I'll be waiting for Mars Guy[1] video before forming an opinion
|
| It has already happened before, when the helicopter flew far
| ahead of the rover and just stayed there until rover caught up
|
| [1]: https://www.youtube.com/@MarsGuy
| hyperthesis wrote:
| oblig. https://xkcd.com/695/
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