NASAs Mars helicopter aces longest flight in almost a year

NASAs Mars helicopter recently aced its 43rd flight, one that turned out to be its longest in almost a year.

During the February 11 flight, Ingenuity traveled 1,280 feet (390 meters) across the martian surface for 146 seconds, reaching a maximum altitude of 40 feet (12 meters) while reaching a top speed of 8.9 mph (4 meters per second). The flight was a repositioning mission in preparation for providing further assistance to NASAs Perseverance rover as it continues to explore Jezero Crater.

NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is overseeing the current Mars mission, tweeted about the helicopters 43rd flight just a couple of days before the second anniversary of Perseverance and Ingenuitys spectacular arrival on the red planet:

Ingenuitys 43rd flight was its longest in terms of both time in the air and distance covered since April 29 last year when it completed a mission that lasted 153 seconds across a distance of 421 meters.

The furthest its traveled to date is 708.9 meters in a flight on April 8, 2022, and the longest its stayed airborne is 169.5 seconds in a trip taken on August 16, 2021.

During its two years on Mars, Ingenuity has exceeded expectations, flying way more missions than originally planned, while also surviving a bitterly cold martian winter. A downward-facing camera on Ingenuity has been gathering images of the martian terrain, data thats enabled the Perseverance team to plan the best routes for the ground-based rover as it continues to explore the planet for evidence of ancient microbial life.

NASA engineers have been so impressed with Ingenuitys performance that they plan to build more advanced versions of the flying machine for future Mars missions. One of them could be the Mars Sample Return mission in the 2030s, which is exploring the possibility of using an Ingenuity-like helicopter to collect samples of martian material already gathered by Perseverance. The samples would then be transferred to a spacecraft and returned to Earth for scientific analysis.

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NASAs Mars helicopter aces longest flight in almost a year