NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Completes First Flight with New Navigation Software

For the last few weeks, the operations team of Ingenuity, the helicopter that will be used on Mars, has been busy installing a major software update on the helicopter. This update will give Ingenuity two important new capabilities: hazard avoidance during landing and the use of digital elevation maps to aid navigation. Developed as a technology demonstrator, Ingenuity is designed to operate on flat, smooth terrain like the Wright Brothers terrain on Mars. As Ingenuity continued to explore Jezero Crater with the Perseverance rover, it managed to traverse more challenging terrain than the team had anticipated.

In previous flights, Ingenuity pilots had to find airspaces free of rocks or other obstacles that could potentially damage the vehicle during landing. Jezero Crater is a rocky place, so finding safe airspaces has been difficult. Using Ingenuity's downward-facing navigation camera, this software update adds hazard avoidance on landing. During the flight, this feature will identify the landing site that seems safest for Ingenuity. This capability allows Ingenuity to land safely on rockier terrain than before, giving pilots many more potential landing sites.

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Ingenuity will now be able to land on rocky and hilly terrain

Ingenuity's navigation software was designed to assume that the vehicle was flying on flat terrain. When the helicopter flies over terrain such as hills, this assumption of flat ground causes Ingenuity's navigation software to think the vehicle has changed direction, causing Ingenuity to actually start changing direction to counter the error. On long flights, navigation errors due to rough terrain are accounted for, requiring the crew to select large airfields. This new software update corrects this flat ground assumption by using digital elevation maps of Jezero Crater to help the navigation software distinguish changes in terrain and vehicle motion. This improves Ingenuity's accuracy, allowing pilots to target smaller airspaces going forward. While 34 flights may not seem like a lot, it was Ingenuity's first with this software update. The team will use the results of this simple flight to start testing these new capabilities and ensure that everything works as expected on the surface of Mars. The update brings new functionality to Ingenuity, making it a much more capable vehicle and an effective scout for Perseverance.