NASA has shared a video (above) that maps all the flights taken on Mars by its trailblazing Ingenuity helicopter.
Ingenuity turned the primary plane to realize powered, managed flight on one other planet when its rotors fired up for the primary time to hold it above the martian floor in April 2021.
Following that profitable check hover, the drone-like machine took an extra 71 flights that coated a complete distance of 11 miles. The mission resulted in January after a heavy touchdown precipitated rotor injury that prevented the it from flying once more.
NASA’s video numbers every of the 72 flights, together with the one which noticed it spend the longest time within the air (flight 12, 169.5 seconds), the best one (flight 61, 24 meters, hover solely), the quickest ones (flights 62, 68, and 69, 10 meters per second), and the furthest one (flight 69, 705 meters).
“Ingenuity far surpassed expectations, hovering greater and quicker than beforehand imagined,” NASA stated in a message accompanying the video. “Designed to be a know-how demonstration that may make not more than 5 check flights in 30 days, Ingenuity finally flew greater than 14 occasions farther than the space anticipated, and logged greater than two hours of whole flight time.”
The 4-pound, 19-inch-tall helicopter arrived on Mars with the Perseverance in a dramatic touchdown captured in high-definition video. Ingenuity ended up aiding the rover mission by offering aerial imagery that enabled mission specialists on Earth to map the most secure and most effective routes for Perseverance between areas of scientific curiosity.
Ingenuity’s spectacular achievement has paved the best way for NASA’s bold Dragonfly mission to Saturn’s largest moon, Titan. For this one, NASA will deploy a a lot bigger drone — the scale of a small automobile — to fly between analysis areas in a mission set to launch in 2028.
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