|
Listen to this text  |
As it nears its two-year anniversary on the planet, NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter has accomplished its fiftieth flight on Mars. The fiftieth flight was accomplished on April 13, 2023, when Ingenuity traveled over 1,057 toes (322 meters) in 145.7 seconds.
On its fiftieth flight, Ingenuity achieved a brand new altitude file of 59 toes (18 meters) earlier than settling close to the Belva Crater. NASA plans to have the helicopter carry out one other repositioning flight earlier than it begins exploring the “Fall River Pass” area of the Jezero Crater.
Tomorrow marks the two-year anniversary of Ingenuity’s first flight on Mars, which passed off on April 19, 2021. The helicopter was initially designed as a know-how demonstration that will fly not more than 5 instances. Now, its 23 Earth months and 45 flights past its anticipated lifetime, and has reworked into an operations demonstration.
“When we first flew, we thought we would be incredibly lucky to eke out five flights,” Teddy Tzanetos, Ingenuity workforce lead at JPL, stated. “We have exceeded our expected cumulative flight time since our technology demonstration wrapped by 1,250% and expected distance flown by 2,214%.”
NASA has been so inspired by Ingenuity’s success that it determined to swap out its Sample Fetch Rovers for 2 drones, much like the Ingenuity helicopter, to function backups to the Perseverance Rover within the Mars Sample Return Campaign.
These helicopters are anticipated to make it to the floor of Mars in 2030, and can step in if Perseverance is unable to journey to the lander. Each helicopter might be geared up with mobility wheels on its touchdown legs and one robotic arm. NASA plans for them to fly to the rover if it will get caught, use their robotic arms to retrieve a pattern, after which fly the pattern again to the lander.
Each of Ingenuity’s flights supplies precious flight information that might be utilized by engineers engaged on the designs for future Mars helicopters. The helicopter has been tackling more and more rougher terrain this 12 months because it left the Jazero Crater’s ground in January.
“We are not in Martian Kansas anymore,” Josh Anderson, Ingenuity operations lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California. “We’re flying over the dried-up remnants of an ancient river that is filled with sand dunes, boulders, and rocks, and surrounded by hills that could have us for lunch. And while we recently upgraded the navigation software onboard to help determine safe airfields, every flight is still a white-knuckler.”