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Amorymeltzer
kubanczyk
Livestream timestamp of the video from Perseverance: https://youtu.be/p1KolyCqICI?t=2447 (slightly better quality)
spookthesunset
I hope that in a little while we get an actual video like we got when the whole thing was descending onto the ground.
I am not expecting much from Ingenuity but I would be very disappointed if we didn’t see any video from Perseverance.
I know doing video requires a lot of power, but I really feel it is justified for something like this. It would become a historic video.
HALtheWise
If I recall correctly, Perserverence was recording images at roughly 7hz and will be sending them back over the coming days. I don't think they are compressed as video, since perseverance has pretty wimpy main computers and isn't running FFmpeg like they had for the descent videos, which came from a separate system.
jccooper
We'll get a full video once they have time to uplink it. Unsurprisingly, you can't stream high-quality video from Mars.
tkinom
Can't wait until the SpaceX's Starship land the next gen Mars Helicopter that might be 10-20x bigger in 2-4 years.
BHSPitMonkey
Battery-powered helicopter designs don't really scale on Mars any better than they do here on Earth. At higher vehicle masses, you'd need larger/heavier motors to get the larger/heavier blades turning as quickly as they'd need to (and in much lighter air than we have here).
spookthesunset
Knowing spacex, they will deck that thing out with 4K video even if it means dropping a few satellites into Martian orbit to act as relays.
My understanding is that video requires power to transcode and compress, and power is a scarce resource.
This is especially true on ingenuity, which is powered by six 18650 batteries. And most of that power is dumped into just keeping it warm enough to function, not into actually flying.
https://rotorcraft.arc.nasa.gov/Publications/files/Balaram_A...
alach11
Wouldn't transcoding the video still produce the same amount of heat?
zoomablemind
Congrats to the whole Ingenuity team!
Exciting to see so many young faces and women on the team.
Also, I read up on the project lead MiMi Aung [1] - she's very insipring. I remember seeing her interview at the time when the rover was about to land, so much anticipation and hope. Now, so much excitement is truly uplifting.
Congrats!
trothamel
From https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasas-ingenuity-mars-helicopte... , the International Civil Aviation organization gave Ingenuity the the designator the aircraft type designator IGY, the call sign INGENUITY, and designated the Wright Brothers Field in Jezero Crater on mars as JZRO.
Hopefully that last one sticks when commercial service begins.
Clewza313
The first letters (at least one, often but not always two) of any ICAO airport code represent the country it's in, and by convenient coincidence, the only three unused letters are I, J and X. I personally would probably have plumped for X as in extraterrestrial, but Xxxx codes are already frequently used for unofficial codes like train stations, so maybe someday Mars will indeed be J or JZ.
timr
TIL: according the the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum, the copter is carrying a little piece of fabric from the Wright flyer:
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/mars-helicopter-in...
qwertox
It made me so sad seeing them cheering and clapping, but not getting up and hugging each other :( So much happiness without the ability to vent it. Such a historical moment.
dev_tty01
I wouldn't worry about it too much. I've worked on a small dedicated hardware/software team with a multi-year focus overcoming challenging technical obstacles. We certainly weren't flying a helicopter on a remote planet, but the closeness and shared vision were similar. They know what they did and they know that they did it together. While hugging and other demonstrative behaviors are wonderful and should be cherished, they are trivial compared to the internal feelings of accomplishment and gratitude to have been a part of such of an effort with such a talented team. Those feelings and their shared bonds will stay with them forever.
TekMol
Funny. When I watched that sequence, I was thinking the opposite. That the length of the clapping and cheering would be "too much" for me. I imagined myself being in that room. I probably would have beed very happy, smiling and showing a "thumbs up" sign or something. But I would not clap or cheer. And I certainly would not want to be hugged by some scientist next to me :)
How do other engineers here on HN feel about it?
citizenkeen
If I just got a helicopter up and running on another planet? I'd be hugging everybody.
progman32
One year ago I'd have agreed.
Today? I'd be running around like an excited child, given half a chance. Probably hugging people I know are comfortable with it. I recognized I really do like that energy, and I only live once.
Not saying people who prefer a more restrained celebration are not valid in their preference! Everyone is a little different, and that is a good thing. At my workplace we like to have multiple ways to celebrate a milestone, because it's important that everyone can participate if they want. For example, we might have a team lunch/party (pre covid) for folks who like that, but also, say, personalized notes sent out, or office posters made of the achievement with participants' signatures on it (optional), and companywide announcements (again, representation optional).
For the record the only movie that routinely tears me up is Apollo 13. Specifically, when they land, and the people in Mission Control are shown. Some of those people have a lifelong bond because of that event, I'm sure. That's important to me.
archsurface
There's no chance of me hugging the people I work with. None. Ever. I would only go for drinks with a few of them, but not often. Places vary, and in previous places I've had good drinking buddies, but hugging work people has never happened and never will. I'd hug the helicopter.
publicola1990
I do feel that cheering and clapping was a bit too much for me. If I was involved in something like this, I would have rather preferred a quiet moment of reflection.
Moreover such complex missions can go either way, I think it is perhaps better to be even-tempered and business like about it.
guenthert
Extraordinary achievements call for extraordinary celebrations. I'd expected champagne bottles.
codezero
It's something that became pretty clear to me over the past year - if you don't get excited by this kind of physical contact you're probably a little different from others.
That's OK. I not only don't celebrate that way, it'd make me uncomfortable even for a peer I like to hug me out of excitement. It's not what I want but it's what other people want and it seems to be the norm.
You may end up learning that this may hold you back professionally at some point unless you can stay in a role that doesn't value social signaling, as these behaviors are basically expected, and not performing them will get you excluded, unless you find a way to surround yourself with people who have shared views on this sort of thing, which is really hard to find out because it's implied.
At least that's what I've been thinking this past year of isolation where I have been very happy to not feel obliged to do the social things everyone else so desperately wants to go out and do together.
I'm on the lookout for backcountry camping trips I can do once things are "back to normal" so I can continue my isolation while everyone is at restaurants and parties.
lofi_lory
I don't think it's just cultural or anything for most people. Not just communication. I am usually not overly social at all, but I am now starting to crave other people's body warmth on a physical level. Feels like a headache... I can't enjoy anything anymore, because of it. The craving is there all the time, there is no substitute for the closeness I have not. I fantasize about pressing my body through an overcrowded club, collecting other people's sweat on me, friends screaming into my ears spitting all over my face. Sweat, sebum, saliva, warmth, smell, microbes, laughter, eye contact. It's not a sexual desire, it's something different completely drained, thirsty, essential for survival. I think back then, if my group abandoned me, I would just die of loneliness on the forest's mossy floor, no matter the circumstances.
I am gonna be really irresponsible, once I got my vaccine shot.
divbzero
No hugging but the joy in the room was palpable — even with masks you could see people literally laughing out loud when the altimeter data came in.
monkeynotes
I agree, the one person who was excited looked like she stifled herself because the energy in the room was so low. Considering what they just achieved, and how much work they put into the project... I mean, we celebrate more when we have a successful sprint.
elpatoisthebest
She did mention it, but they were probably told not to get too close for their COVID protocol. And watching her speech, she didn't seem stifled at all, she is so enthusiastic.
"We don't know from history what Wilbur and Orville did after their first successful flight, but I imagine the two brothers hugged each other. Well, you know I'm hugging you virtually. And, you guys who haven't been with me for 4, 5, 6 years...if it weren't for COVID-19 you guys don't have a chance of me (I think she was saying they wouldn't be able to stop her from hugging them) but I cannot give you a hug, so this is all I can do. I'm giving you the hugs."
lisper
> I imagine the two brothers hugged each other
Actually, that's pretty unlikely. It was a very different time. A display like that would have been considered unseemly. Also, neither Wilbur nor Orville were known for being particularly emotional or affectionate. Neither brother ever married.
jedimastert
Sadly relevent xkcd
The title text hit me a little harder than I was expecting:
> I've never been that big of a hug person, but it turns out I'm not quite this small of a hug person either.
WillDaSilva
> I've never been that big of a hug person...
The graph has a rough average of about 20 distinct people per year. Maybe I'm the odd one out here, but that seems quite high.
qaq
hugging is very risky @ work in US
runawaybottle
You trying to get men fired?
Viker
It made me sad too.
All these brilliant minds working for so long and accomplishing so much... Just for a clap and cheer, yet tommorow they have to do it all again in the rat race. Yet cryptokings are basking in glory for a lifetime.
objectivetruth
They didn't do it "for a clap and a cheer." They did it because they were inspired to add to humanity's millenia-long advance of scientific progress.
And I'd argue that cryptokings may be basking in money for a lifetime -- if they cash out at a good time and diversify their holdings. But the only people glorifying them are cryptoking-wannabes.
Different strokes for different folks, I guess.
Torkel
Yay! Cool that they made it :)
The video feed had a "university team" feel to it that was sort of unexpected and nice :)
I was surprised to see the tack sharp shadow on the image from the downwards facing navigation camera. My thinking was that the rotors needed to spin way faster on this drone than on a drone on earth, because of how thin the atmosphere is on mars. But the sharpness seems to indicate that the rotor speed is perhaps all that different! Or perhaps the whole thing is just so light that there is not so much mass to lift up?
eddyg
The two rotor blades are just under 4 feet long, and spin in opposite directions at 2,500rpm. The rotor tips are moving at about 2/3 of the speed of sound on Mars. (For ref, Ingenuity weighed 4 pounds on Earth, so about 1.5 pounds in Martian gravity.)
Torkel
Good data! Nice how martian gravity makes things lighter. If I'm doing the math correctly I get to to be an exposure time of around 0.1-0.5 ms. Fast!, but not unheard of fast :)
JKCalhoun
Yeah, lighter but an atmosphere so thin it's harder to get lift.
I wonderful aircraft if it is a net gain or loss — Mars vs. Earth.
walrus01
The Black and white bottom facing camera may have a very short exposure time and a global (not rolling) shutter.
jpdus
Better quality video of the flight now on Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wMnOo2zcjXA
jordanpg
Why does the downlink operator have what appears to be Github open? He seems to be carefully monitoring it. Is raw data going straight to Github?
mseepgood
So he can file an issue if something goes wrong.
erk__
Seems like they are using a github issue to stream the data to, probably through a bot of some kind, I cannot find the issue where it is going on so I imagine it is on a private instance
74d-fe6-2c6
https://youtu.be/p1KolyCqICI?t=1958
Here it says "Enterprise".
mino
Yes, if you look closely at their shell you'll see they are calling some `python3` command to get/push/(?) stuff into that PR.
noisy_boy
Probably using the issue as an aggregation landing page. Bots can post to it, details can be manually added too, in-built support for media, integration with version control and ability to leverage in-built Github workflow. Looks like a smart way to use existing infrastructure.
74d-fe6-2c6
I'm also curious to understand more about how Git comes into play here.
pomian
What a treat! A very slow and quiet drama, presented by a tight group, a team, of geeks. Appreciated by everyone watching. Looking forward to more.
itissid
There is a really good explanation of this machine on Veritasium:
techdragon
Awesome! Well deserved congratulations all round to the team! Dare mighty things indeed.
Only negative thing I can think of is that I really hope the Perseverance rover has better video onboard just not transmitted yet. Maybe they will release it during the press conference later today. The one they showed was a little clipped. It had spin up. then it sort of cuts to the mid flight and then cuts to the spin down... all the takeoff and touchdown excitement is totally missing from the video they showed. If I didn't know as much as I do about how image telemetry is handled... I'd actually have thought it was broken, thats how abrupt the transition is in the video.
_rpd
Yes, higher res, higher fps is coming, but will take a couple of days.
I hope the landing was smooth and we can look forward to lots of aerial photos from Ingenuity.
techdragon
As I expected, I just didn't catch any mention of this during the Live stream, I figured I might have missed some mention of it since since I tuned in right about when they started getting data frames from the DSN.
I figured the team had decided to uplink only the most essential frames for this test flight (spin up, hover, and spin down) and send the low-res preview versions of them back in order to get the data back as fast as possible before a much slower upload of the full mastcam higher resolution video frames.
Whats extra amazing here is this is High Definition (possibly even in 3D) video sent to us from a nuclear powered rover on Mars!
ourmandave
I had to look it up because I could only see IGHTY THINGS, but the text on the wall is JPL's mantra, "DARE MIGHTY THINGS".
Indeed.
JulianMorrison
Or in this case, flighty things.
ourmandave
Well this changes the whole plot to The Martian if he can just get Domino's delivered.
chronogram
There’s a Korean food delivery commercial with just that theme: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQGtK41Wj3o
JulianMorrison
Yeah, but the delivery fee is a doozy.
ourmandave
That's one small pepperoni for a man, one giant tip for mankind.
_joel
Might be cold by the time it gets there though
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Roughly the start of success from the livestream: https://youtu.be/p1KolyCqICI?t=2265
Video (of the video from Perseverance): https://twitter.com/NASA/status/1384099167832735748 (Better version from the livestream in child comment https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=26861334)