Ingenuity helicopter sets altitude record on 35th Mars flight
NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter continues to raise the bar for Red Planet flight.
The 4-pounder (1.8 kilograms) Wit flew 46 feet (14 meters) above the red dirt of Mars on Saturday (Dec. 3), setting a new altitude record on its 35th flight outside Earth.
The previous record for the small helicopter was 39 feet (12 m), achieved on three previous occasions March Do you want. (You can get a summary of the 35 Ingenuity exits in the mission flight log (opens in a new tab).)
Related: Fly over the tracks of the Mars rover with the Ingenuity helicopter (video)
A record high for the #MarsHelicopter! Ingenuity completed flight 35 over the weekend and set a new maximum altitude record, reaching 46 feet (14 meters) above the Martian surface. See more stats in flight log: https://t.co/7DMHj9LkNX pic.twitter.com/qAj5H9Z68CDecember 6, 2022
The contraption landed with NASA Perseverance rover on the floor of Crater Lake in February 2021. The helicopter soon deployed from the rover’s belly and embarked on a campaign to prove that powered flight is possible on thin land. atmosphere of mars.
This initial technology demonstration phase lasted less than a month and consisted of only five sorties. But NASA soon granted Ingenuity a mission extension, keeping the aircraft flying. Its current goals are focused on pushing the envelope of Red Planet flight and performing reconnaissance for Perseverance.
The rover is looking for signs of old mars life on the ground of Jezero, 45 kilometers wide, which hosted a lake and river delta billions of years ago. Perseverance is also collecting and caching a number of samples, which perhaps a joint NASA-European Space Agency campaign will bring back to Earth. already in 2033.
Saturday’s flight was Ingenuity’s first since Nov. 22 and only the second to operate since a major software update. This update, which took several weeks to install, “gives Ingenuity two important new capabilities: hazard avoidance when landing and the use of digital elevation maps to aid navigation,” wrote the members of the mission team in one blog entry at the end of last month (opens in a new tab).
Ingenuity covered about 49 feet (15 m) of horizontal distance on Saturday’s flight, which lasted 52 seconds. The helicopter has now traveled a total of 24,302 feet (7,407 m) and stayed aloft for 59.9 minutes in its 35 Mars sorties, according to the mission’s flight log.
Mike Wall is the author of “Over there (opens in a new tab)” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall (opens in a new tab). follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in a new tab) yen Facebook (opens in a new tab).
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