(ORDO NEWS) — Late last week, the Ingenuity helicopter was able to re-establish contact with the Perseverance rover after a brief outage. Space agency officials believe that the impending Martian winter is probably to blame.
On May 5, Ingenuity thankfully sent a Perseverance signal after the helicopter missed a scheduled communication session.
This is the first time this has happened since the rover and helicopter landed on Mars in February 2021, according to NASA.
NASA noted that Ingenuity went into a low power state to conserve energy because the charge of six lithium-ion batteries fell below a critical level.
This is likely due to the approach of winter, when more dust appears in the Martian atmosphere, and temperatures drop even lower. The dust blocks the amount of sunlight reaching the helicopter’s solar array, which charges its batteries.
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