mhnatt said:
Sure, I may not get it and my remark is somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Yes, I realize environmental conditions are crazy there but all of your rave about autonomous flight is pretty much old hat nowadays with our AI and the fact that the Viking lander dealt with this stuff on Mars nearly 50 years ago back when color TVs was hip.
Perhaps this is a huge deal if you weren't alive during the space race and the crazy impressive things that went on for a brief 10-20 years.
When a footprint is set on Mars, then I'll join you.
Worlds of difference between this and the Viking landers. Nothing about this is, "old hat," and when it comes to space, even the most simple things are infinitely more complex and important than first glance. Sputnik was nothing but a beach ball sized radio transmitter, but even that was a huge leap.
The Viking landers were just that. Landers. All they did was slow down enough to not be destroyed on impact, and then they sat there. It was an impressive feat for the time, but the problem was relatively simple. Ingenuity faces far more numerous and complex problems.
The constraints around the Viking landers were nothing compared to this. They could be fairly heavy (1250 lbs) and were powered by plutonium, so warmth and power were not really an issue. Ingenuity has to be
light (4 lbs), so radioisotope thermoelectric generators are not an option. It has to carry its own solar panels and it's own batteries along with motors and props. That also means it doesn't have a lot of room left for sensors, avionics, fuselage, and payload. It's a lot closer to Sojourner than the Vikings, but it has to do even more with less.
You think AI is easy, but AI requires hardware and power. Those are both at a premium for Ingenuity. Design also started in 2014, so everything is based on what we had available then. Ingenuity is processing its imaging and navigation algorithms using what is essentially a 7 year old cellphone. From someone who knows what that takes, it's impressive to say the least.
Self navigation is also novel. Everything mobile we've sent to another planet so far is basically human driven outside of atmospheric entry. Every rover is sent commands on where to go based on a human review of their surroundings and a carefully planned route. It can be tedious work, and that's why they don't cover much ground. Perseverance has some built in autonomous navigation and should do about 650 feet per day, but it's also nuclear powered and the size of a small car. Ingenuity's fourth flight was 2 minutes and went a total of 800+ feet round trip. Ingenuity navigates on its own, but it has to do it without GPS or a compass. Mars doesn't have a GPS satellite network or reliable magnetic field, so Ingenuity has to use new (or old school) ways of navigating, like tracking the sun. The entire concept is actually very clever. Moving at that speed, that all has to happen very quickly though. Whereas Perseverance gets to plod along slowly at 1' per minute or so as it processes images, Ingenuity must do it on the fly because it's traveling at 400' per minute (which also makes it the fastest thing on that planet by far).
