• paulhammond5155@lemmy.worldOP
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    10 months ago

    Not close enough - After the drive on Sol 1042 they are 806.16 meters (2644.87 ft) apart. The record flight distance was just 708.91 meters (2325.83 ft). However they wont be flying it again. They lost ~25 % of that one rotor (JPL engineering in the teleconference) and even if the rotor was still in balance (highly unlikely) the loss of 25% of a rotor, means it could not gain lift in the thin atmosphere at full speed. They plan on talking to the rover while they drive out of the crater in the months ahead as there is a ton of engineering data to garner: Solar cell generation, battery performance data, radio signal propagation as well as imaging the terrain for change (science), plus I’m sure they’ll be thinking of a few other things it could do…