NASA’s Creativity Helicopter continues to raise the bar for Red Planet flight.
4 pounds (1.8 kilograms) cleverness It soared 46 feet (14 m) above the red dirt of Mars on Saturday (December 3), setting a new altitude record on its 35th extraterrestrial trip.
The previous record for a small chopper was 39 feet (12 m), and it had been achieved in three previous occasions Mars flights. (You can get a summary of all 35 Creativity sorties in the missions Flight log (Opens in a new tab).)
Related: Fly over the tracks of the Mars probe with an innovative helicopter (video)
Highest level ever for a #MarsHelicopter! Ingenuity completed Flight 35 over the weekend and set a new maximum altitude record, reaching 46 feet (14 meters) above the surface of Mars. See more stats in the flight log: https://t.co/7DMHj9LkNX pic.twitter.com/qAj5H9Z68CDecember 6, 2022
Creativity landed with NASA perseverance Rover on the floor Jezero Crater In February 2021. The helicopter quickly sprouted from the rover’s belly and embarked on a campaign to show that powered flight is possible in the open. Mars atmosphere.
This initial phase of demonstrating the technology took less than a month and consisted of just five sorties. But NASA quickly granted Ingenuity a mission extension, which kept the rotorcraft in flight. Its current goals focus on pushing the envelope of Red Planet flight and conducting reconnaissance for Perseverance.
The rover is looking for ancient signs Mars life On the floor of the 28-mile (45-kilometer) wide Jezero, which hosted a lake and river delta billions of years ago. Perseverance is also working to collect and cache a series of samples, which a joint NASA-ESA campaign will return to Earth, possibly. Early in the year 2033.
Saturday’s flight was Ingenuity’s first since November 22 and only the second in a year Major software update. This update, which took several weeks to install, “provides the Ingenuity with major new capabilities: avoiding hazards on descent and using digital elevation maps to aid navigation,” mission team members wrote in Blog post late last month (Opens in a new tab).
Dexterity covered about 49 feet (15 meters) of horizontal distance on Saturday’s ride, which lasted 52 seconds. The helicopter has now flown a total of 24,302 feet (7,407 meters) and stayed in the air for 59.9 minutes in 35 Mars sorties, according to the mission’s flight log.
Mike Wall is the author of “Abroad (Opens in a new tab)Book (Major Grand Publishing, 2018; illustration by Carl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @tweet (Opens in a new tab). Follow us on Twitter @tweet (Opens in a new tab) and on Facebook (Opens in a new tab).
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