"The current plan for the first-ever attempt at powered, controlled flight on another planet is [...] to take off from Mars' Jezero Crater on Sunday at 10:54 pm US eastern time (0254 GMT Monday) and hover 10 feet (3 meters) above the surface for a half-minute, NASA said."
Set your alarms :)
If the given time is actually take off, we can expect images from the flight at the earliest around 11:10pm (E(S?)T)/ 03:31 AM (GMT) as Earth and Mars are currently at a distance of 15 light minutes from each other.
If they don't have a live feed, I would watch their Twitter account just in case. Useful links:
According to NASA [1]: Perseverance is expected to obtain imagery of the flight using its Navcam and Mastcam-Z imagers, with the pictures expected to come down that evening (early morning Monday, April 12, in Southern California). The helicopter will also document the flight from its perspective, with a color image and several lower-resolution black-and-white navigation pictures possibly being available by the next morning.
I once witnessed a person take their brand new electric rc helicopter place it on the ground and before I knew it the thing flipped over and smashed itself on the ground. I have a lot of respect for them taking their time; this could work incredibly well or for some unforeseen reason smash into the ground. In my situation it was the loss of signal that caused the accident when the pilot admitted to accidentally shutting off his controller right at that moment.
Isn't "space copter" a bit of a misnomer? Isn't a copter a device with whirring blades tilted just so to cause thrust through a fluid medium (to wit, a propeller)? And isn't space defined often as that place where there is no such fluid like medium? So wouldn't it make more sense for it to be called a "Mars Copter"?
Last week I almost thought it flew, but then it actually said "survived first night" not "survived first flight". And now I spot "first Mars flight" in the headline and thought it again but... nope, now it's "ready to fly". Like, great, let me know when it does.
When I read such articles I imagine SpaceX dropping their own rover in a few years that will autonomously drive around and gather more data in 30 days than NASA had in 30 years.
However, it will also manage to get stuck/kill itself within the 30 days ;-)
One thing spacex seems to do better is “eye candy”. They’d make sure that copter would transmit high quality video of its flight... constraints be damned.
Eye candy is very important for getting the public excited about these missions. More public excitement == more money and easier recruiting.
Musk said SpaceX would have a mars mission (not manned) on every earth/mars rendezvous starting in 2018. He originally said it was going to use dragon. And then he said manned missions starting in 2024.
They backed out of that but are still claiming they will do the manned around-the-moon trip in 2023 using Starship, and haven't backed down from point-to-point earth passenger travel by 2028 for cheaper than a business class flight.
This is my concern about SpaceX applying its superpower to Mars. Rapid prototype iteration on Mars is orbital time: you wait 2 years for the next launch window and then ~7 months for travel, blow something up and learn lessons, repeat next window.
Hopefully they do some rapid iterating on Starship Moon missions and get some of the blowing up out of the way early.
[+] [-] _Microft|5 years ago|reply
Set your alarms :)
If the given time is actually take off, we can expect images from the flight at the earliest around 11:10pm (E(S?)T)/ 03:31 AM (GMT) as Earth and Mars are currently at a distance of 15 light minutes from each other.
If they don't have a live feed, I would watch their Twitter account just in case. Useful links:
https://mobile.twitter.com/NASAPersevere
https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020/
Edit: see reply by samizdis for another, better link
[+] [-] samizdis|5 years ago|reply
[1] https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-s-mars-helicopter-to...
[+] [-] dima55|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _joel|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] d--b|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] 14|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] qwertox|5 years ago|reply
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AXSfFLGeVZA&t=156s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E24JIetETAE&t=91s
[+] [-] celias|5 years ago|reply
https://mars.nasa.gov/technology/helicopter/status/291/mars-...
[+] [-] Octopodes|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] travisgriggs|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|5 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] totetsu|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lucb1e|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mobilemidget|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] imglorp|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hnedeotes|5 years ago|reply
[+] [-] arendtio|5 years ago|reply
However, it will also manage to get stuck/kill itself within the 30 days ;-)
[+] [-] spookthesunset|5 years ago|reply
Eye candy is very important for getting the public excited about these missions. More public excitement == more money and easier recruiting.
[+] [-] cma|5 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SpaceX_Mars_program#2016_plans
They backed out of that but are still claiming they will do the manned around-the-moon trip in 2023 using Starship, and haven't backed down from point-to-point earth passenger travel by 2028 for cheaper than a business class flight.
https://www.vox.com/2018/4/11/17227036/flight-spacex-gwynne-... ("Shotwell estimated the ticket cost would be somewhere between economy and business class on a plane ")
[+] [-] imglorp|5 years ago|reply
Hopefully they do some rapid iterating on Starship Moon missions and get some of the blowing up out of the way early.