After some forensics, Brown and his team thinks they have determined what happened. The next day another single ACK confirmed the helicopter was indeed alive, a welcome relief for the team.

The team began to worry that they might not hear from the helicopter again.įinally, on Sol 761, nearly a week after the first missed check-in, the communications team observed a single, lonely radio ACK (radio acknowledgement). 'Even in the worst communications environments, we had always seen some indication of activity.'īut now, there was nothing. 'In more than 700 sols operating the helicopter on Mars, not once had we ever experienced a total radio blackout,' Brown wrote. While the team quickly figured out the issue, because of Ingenuity's off-the shelf batteries, they expected this issue could happen again.

This reduced voltage reset the mission clock, causing the helicopter's system to be out of sync with Perseverance rover. About a year ago, a brief two-day communication glitch occurred because Ingenuity experienced insufficient battery charge as night fell at the start of the Martian winter. In a recent blog post, Travis Brown, Chief Engineer for Ingenuity shared how the team lost contact with the tiny rotorcraft for six excruciating days.Īt first, they were not overly concerned when communications ceased from the helicopter on Sol 755.

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