Ingenuity helicopter sets altitude record on 35th Mars flight
NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter continues to raise the bar for Red Planet flights.
The 4 pounds (1.8 kilograms) Resourcefulness soared 46 feet (14 meters) above the red dirt of Mars on Saturday (Dec. 3), setting a new altitude record on its 35th flight beyond Earth.
The small helicopter’s previous record was 39 feet (12 m), set on three previous ones Mars to flee. (You can get an overview of all 35 Ingenuity flights in the missions flight log (opens in new tab).)
Related: Fly over Mars rover trails with Ingenuity helicopter (video)
An all-time high for the #MarsHelicopter!Ingenuity completed flight 35 over the weekend and set a new maximum altitude record, reaching 14 meters above the surface of Mars. See more flight log stats: https://t.co/7DMHj9LkNX pic.twitter.com/qAj5H9Z68CDecember 6, 2022
Ingenuity landed with NASA’s Perseverance robber on the floor of Crater Lake in February 2021. The helicopter soon deployed from the belly of the rover and embarked on a campaign to show that powered flight is possible in the thin Mars atmosphere.
That first technology demonstration phase lasted less than a month and consisted of just five missions. But NASA soon granted Ingenuity a mission extension, keeping the rotorcraft flying. Current objectives are focused on pushing the boundaries of Red Planet flight and conducting reconnaissance for Perseverance.
The rover looks for signs of the old Mars life at the bottom of the 45 kilometer wide Jezero, which billions of years ago harbored a lake and a river delta. Perseverance is also collecting and caching a series of monsters, which a joint campaign by NASA and European Space Agency may send back to Earth as early as 2033.
Saturday’s flight was the first for Ingenuity since Nov. 22 and only the second since a major software update. That update, which took several weeks to install, “gives Ingenuity two major new capabilities: avoiding hazards when landing and using digital elevation maps to help navigate,” mission team members wrote in a statement. blog post at the end of last month (opens in new tab).
Ingenuity covered about 50 feet of horizontal distance in 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 during its 35 missions to Mars, according to the mission’s flight log.
Mike Wall is the author of “Outside (opens in new tab)(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a book about the search for extraterrestrial life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall (opens in new tab). follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) and further Facebook (opens in new tab).
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