I'm a little disappointed that people were quick to write off #Ingenuity while the little beast is still alive and functional, albeit unable to fly due to the damage it suffered in one or more of its rotor blades.
Flying on Mars may be over, but the game is not. I hope #NASA will assign some other tasks to it, like those during the recent solar conjunction, and will keep collecting images and telemetry for as long as it goes.
That "for as long as it goes" is in itself a very useful piece of information wrt the behavior of the power system and the performance of the solar panel.
@65dBnoise There is so much valuable postmortem data in any instrument on another planet. Ignoring it would be tragically irresponsible.
@dalias
Indeed there is, and death here means either dead batteries or communications.
The visibility/coverage map which I posted yesterday (https://mastodon.social/@65dBnoise/111819323160393937) shows that for most part of the planned route for #Perseverance during Phase 2 #Ingenuity will either be visible or with a good chance for radio comms. It may even come back to life after the coming Martian winter, like it did yesteryear.
@65dBnoise FWIW I was using "postmortem" in the sense we use it in IT/infosec incidents, where it doesn't actually imply "death", just an adverse event that you gain valuable knowledge from studying.
@dalias Electrical engineer here