機智號直升機克服「異常」完成第六次火星試飛

Sanji Feng
·1 分鐘 (閱讀時間)
UNSPECIFIED: In this concept illustration provided by NASA, NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter stands on the Red Planet's surface as NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover (partially visible on the left) rolls away. NASA's Perseverance (Mars 2020) rover will store rock and soil samples in sealed tubes on the planet's surface for future missions to retrieve in the area known as Jezero crater on the planet Mars. A key objective for Perseverance's mission on Mars is astrobiology, including the search for signs of ancient microbial life. The rover will characterize the planet's geology and past climate, paving the way for human exploration of the Red Planet, and be the first mission to collect and cache Martian rock and regolith. (Photo illustration by NASA via Getty Images)

機智號直升機在火星上的試飛仍在繼續，來到第六次飛行，過程出現了一些問題。在起飛 54 秒後，機智號的導航相機遭遇了掉幀的情況，由此引發的時間戳錯誤，令飛控軟體無法正常使用導航相機拍攝的圖像來正確判斷環境和調整誤差。

不過面對這樣的突發狀況，機智號還是憑藉其它組件的正常工作，克服「異常」完成了最後 65 米的飛行。雖然跟原定的落地位置相比偏差了大約 5 米，但終究還是安全降落，也算是積累了一些不同的經驗吧。目前 NASA 的工程師已經在著力修復問題，接下來機智號再度上天的可能性應該還是比較大的。