NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter flew for the thirty seventh time on Saturday (Dec. 17), acing a hop designed partly to check the capabilities of its new software program.
Ingenuity stayed aloft for 55 seconds and coated 203 ft (62 meters) of Purple Planet floor on the flight, which was its third this month.
The primary targets of Saturday’s sortie have been for Ingenuity “to reposition itself and check new flight software program capabilities,” officers with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, which manages Ingenuity’s mission, said via Twitter (opens in new tab) on Monday (Dec. 19).
Associated: Soar over Mars rover tracks with Ingenuity helicopter (video)
That new software program, which was put in final month, permits Ingenuity to keep away from hazards throughout touchdown and to make use of digital elevation maps for navigation functions, mission staff members have mentioned (opens in new tab).
The rotorcraft landed on the ground of the Purple Planet’s Jezero Crater in February 2021 with NASA’s Perseverance rover, which is trying to find indicators of previous Mars life and amassing samples for future return to Earth.
Ingenuity’s major mission was to indicate that aerial exploration is feasible on Mars regardless of its skinny ambiance, which is simply 1% as dense as that of Earth at sea degree. The helicopter wrapped up that activity over the course of 5 flights within the spring of 2021, then transitioned to an prolonged mission on which it is serving as a scout for Perseverance.
Ingenuity has now traveled a complete of 24,867 ft (7,479 m) and stayed airborne for practically 62 minutes throughout its 37 Purple Planet flights, in accordance with the mission’s flight log (opens in new tab). These numbers ought to proceed to extend for some time, for the chopper stays in good well being, staff members have mentioned.
Ingenuity’s success is paving the best way for future rotorcraft missions to the Purple Planet. JPL is creating ideas for bigger, extra bold Mars helicopters that may collect science information, for instance. And NASA plans to launch two Ingenuity-like craft to the Purple Planet later within the 2020s to assist deliver Perseverance’s samples dwelling to Earth.
The baseline plan for the Mars sample-return marketing campaign requires Perseverance to ship its samples to a rocket-equipped lander. That rocket will launch the samples to Mars orbit, the place a European spacecraft will snag them and haul them to Earth, maybe as early as 2033.
The helicopters will fly on the lander as a backup: If Perseverance is not capable of ship the samples itself, the choppers will ferry them to the lander from depots on Jezero’s ground. (Perseverance is taking two samples from every of its goal rocks; it can retailer one set of samples on its physique and cache the opposite set in depots.)
Mike Wall is the writer of “Out There (opens in new tab)” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a e book in regards to the seek for alien life. Observe him on Twitter @michaeldwall (opens in new tab). Observe us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) and on Fb (opens in new tab).
