We’re Going Big for Flight 9 | Hacker News Reader

We’re Going Big for Flight 9

mars.nasa.gov

29 pointsSami_Lehtinen15 comments

Summary:

The Mars Helicopter (Ingenuity) is going to attempt to fly .39 miles at 11mph for just shy of 3 minutes over an area that could otherwise never be covered by a wheeled rover. It'll be taking pictures along the way and navigating over uneven terrain despite not being programmed for it and will be communicating with the rover at distances past its design goals.

Wish them luck. <-- their words, not mine.

Commentary:

Whoa. They are really going all out with this. It's hard to explain how difficult this is without GPS on Earth nevermind on another planet. I admire their confidence, boldness, and willingness to learn from the potential failure.

This is about the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars. It is probably doomed to "Live fast, die young" but it is still amazing.

(Also, AFAIK it is the only installation of Linux on another planet)

Chinese Marsian rover runs on Kylin OS, which is Linux based

1.https://www.scmp.com/news/china/science/article/3138313/mars...

2. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kylin_(operating_system)

I did not know that. It appears that conquering the solar system is easier than conquering the PC desktop.

So Linux might be only OS with an installed base covering several planets?

It's the only general purpose OS that's both on several planets and usable on commodity computing hardware, as opposed to a real time OS or the custom operating systems that predated them. They have a much longer history in space: VxWorks has been on every Mars surface mission since the Pathfinder Lander in 1997 including Perseverance, New Horizons flew by Pluto in 2015 running Nucleus OS and RTEMS is on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter.

Sounds right; you can’t open Windows in space.

In space, no one can hear you phone home.

vxworks claimed that title. Unfortunately, Linux never was the "only OS with an installed base covering several planets".

And if you never heard of vxworks or QNX, that's the point. They just work and that's the point.

  > It is probably doomed to "Live fast, die young" but it is still amazing.

It's doomed to "Dare great things", as per the JPL motto. Like many JPL projects, they are willing to take great risks that may offer great rewards. Probably the last NASA institution with this mindset.

Not sure it's great risks: they seem to have prepared for many cases and have very good failure prevention. I bet that flight is well within what they planned for. Great planning.

No, the fine article mentions that this flight will exceed the design parameters of the craft.

Many space probes exceed their "planned design", some by many more years of activity for example: the official plan is not really what the engineering has been planning.

If I recollect correctly,some of Ingenuity's navigation partly relies on a down looking camera. I hope that all those "sandy ripples" they cross aren't too alike or at a frequency that matches the camera frame rate. This would lead to stroboscopic issues with judging speed and position. I'm sure though they would have the gyros, accelerometers, and maybe even radio signal strength all playing a part in the navigation exercise. It would be a great engineering project to work on.

They say late Sunday night, but no timezone. :(

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