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Comment by galacticaactual | Hacker News Reader

It is literally a milestone on a list of milestones.

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/press_kits/mars_2020/launch/mi...

Wow, reading the first comment I would think that this was planned. It literally is the third thing on a list of "milestones."

I find the order of milestones a little surprising.

Why didn't they test the survival of the freezing cold after testing the rotor blades, lift-off and perhaps a short flight in the vicinity of the rover?

It's probably as simple as: they didn't have time. You have to move slowly and carefully on Mars. One rushed mistake and it's over.

Yes, but chances of getting useful data out of the helicopter are much greater if you test the thing before subjecting it to harsh conditions.

For example: if you know that lift-off works, then that's a huge datapoint.

I bet they'd move faster if they could. I'm guessing for takeoff there's a good amount of analysis to do beforehand. Terrain, weather, system checks, whatever.

I don't know the actual list, but it's not hard to guess why they couldn't do everything, including ejecting it from the main rover and getting the main rover out of the way, in the ~12-14 hours a day that they have to do stuff.

They don't want to fly it with the rover nearby. It needs to get to a safe distance before they can fly it.

They fully expect it to survive the night - it'll have survived identical conditions in pre-launch testing - and thus there's no need to rush through the other steps.

Identical except that the real one blasted off in a rocket.

Part of the testing procedure includes vibration and sound testing that effectively simulates launch conditions.

https://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/pdf/639713main_Vibratio...

NASA knows what they’re doing.

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