Only a week after setting a brand new altitude report on Mars, NASA’s spectacular Ingenuity helicopter has simply flown sooner than ever earlier than, reaching a velocity of 17.9 mph (eight meters per second) throughout its 60th flight. Its earlier report was 15 mph (6.5 m/s) in a flight earlier this 12 months.
Ingenuity additionally lined 1,116 toes (340 meters) in 133 seconds at an altitude of 53 toes (16 meters) throughout its speediest flight throughout the martian floor.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which is overseeing the Ingenuity mission, shared information of the flight report on Tuesday in a submit on social media:
It’s been an excellent month for the JPL group because it seeks to push its valiant Ingenuity helicopter to its limits. Only a week in the past, the 4-pound, 19-inch-tall helicopter set one other report when it reached an altitude of 20 meters, beating its earlier report by 6 meters.
However its mission isn’t all about setting data. The group despatched Ingenuity to Mars with the Perseverance rover, with the pair reaching the crimson planet in February 2021. The drone-like flying machine arrived as a know-how demonstration, with the group eager to see if such a contraption may turn into the primary to attain powered, managed flight on one other planet.
In April 2021, it did precisely that, getting into the historical past books because it rose just some meters above the dusty martian floor earlier than rigorously returning for a delicate touchdown. That flight gave the group confidence to push the drone somewhat additional with each subsequent flight.
It proved so adept at dealing with Mars’ super-thin environment that aerial imagery captured by Ingenuity has been utilized by the Perseverance group to plan secure and environment friendly routes for the rover because it strikes between areas of curiosity in quest of proof of historic microbial life. The flying machine’s imagery from such a singular perspective may additionally show helpful for future crewed missions to the distant planet.
Nevertheless it hasn’t all been easy crusing, because the helicopter has skilled plenty of technical points alongside the best way. Encouragingly, regardless of the space between engineers on Earth and Mars, they had been all resolved.
The success of Ingenuity means NASA is prone to construct extra superior designs for future missions to Mars and maybe different celestial our bodies far past.
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