Ingenuity Helicopter Takes an Ambitious Shortcut on Mars in Record-Breaking Ninth Flight

The Ingenuity helicopter has caught the touchdown of its most troublesome flight but, the craft’s ninth. The helicopter took a high-speed sojourn over tough terrain.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced the flight’s success this morning in a tweet. The helicopter’s chief pilot, Håvard Grip, and its chief engineer, Bob Balaram, had earlier described their intentions for the flight in a NASA blog post. In their submit, they indicated that Ingenuity’s ninth flight would break its present groundspeed, distance, and airtime information. Though we’ve but to get full particulars on this newest flight, Grip and Balaram mentioned the craft can be instructed to fly over 2,050 ft (625 meters) at 16 ft (5 meters) per second and that the complete flight would final practically three minutes.

Since the Perseverance rover started its scientific explorations final month, Ingenuity has stored dutifully near its terrestrial counterpart. Not this time. Perseverance is perched on the japanese fringe of a rugged stretch of Mars known as Séítah, or “amidst the sand” in Diné Bizaad, the Navajo language. The Séítah is characterised by undulating sands that NASA scientists imagine can be powerful for a wheeled automobile to traverse. That made the area excellent for this episode in Ingenuity’s development, because it compelled the helicopter to enterprise nicely past the rover that carried it the 183 million miles from Earth. Flying throughout the dunes confirmed off the utility of aerial autos on Mars and past, a degree already confirmed emphatically within the craft’s first 5 flights. The ninth flight additionally challenged Ingenuity’s navigation algorithm, which was actually designed to learn the flatter terrain of the Red Planet, not the undulating sands of the Séítah.

Some black-and-white imagery from the helicopter was launched from the ninth flight, however nonetheless to come back are new coloration photos of the Séítah’s rocks and ripples, over which Ingenuity handed. The craft doubtless didn’t keep a continuing velocity all through its flight; due to uncertainty about the way in which Ingenuity’s navigation system would interpret Séítah’s fluctuating topography, the staff instructed the craft to fly extra slowly over the rougher elements of the area.

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Grip and Balaram mentioned of their weblog that this ninth flight was essentially the most nerve-wracking because the helicopter’s maiden voyage on the Red Planet. Though they’ve but to publish all the info from the flight, one factor is for certain: The flight was successful, and we’ve but to hit the boundaries of this record-breaking rotorcraft.

More: Ingenuity Flies Again as Perseverance Rover Stars Looking for Life on Mars