NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter now has 3 lots Mars flights under its belt.
The 4-pound (1.8 kgs) Ingenuity aced its 36 th Red Planet sortie on Sunday (Dec. 10), remaining up for 60.5 seconds on a flight that covered 361 feet (110 meters) of horizontal range.
Sunday’s hop came simply a week after Ingenuity set a brand-new elevation record, skyrocketing 46 feet (14 m) above the flooring of Mars’ Jezero Crater on Dec. 3. The chopper got an optimum of 33 feet (10 m) above the red dirt this previous Sunday, according to the objective’s flight log(opens in brand-new tab)
Related: Soar over Mars rover tracks with Ingenuity helicopter (video)
Ingenuity landed with NASA’s Perseverance rover in February 2021, charged with revealing that powered flight is possible on Mars regardless of the world’s thin environment.
The helicopter aced that main goal throughout a five-flight project in the spring of 2021 Ingenuity then moved into a prolonged objective throughout which it’s pressing the limits of Red Planet flight and acting as a scout for Perseverance.
The rover, on the other hand, is searching for indications of ancient Mars life and gathering lots of samples. If all goes according to strategy, this Mars product will be gone back to Earth by a joint NASA/European Space Agency project, possibly as early as 2033.
According to Ingenuity’s flight log, the rotorcraft has actually taken a trip an overall of 24,633 feet (7,517 m) throughout its 36 sorties and remained air-borne for almost 61 minutes.
Perseverance is a lot more well-traveled. The car-sized rover has actually travelled an overall of 8.53 miles (1373 km)(opens in brand-new tab) on the flooring of Jezero, which harbored a lake and a river delta billions of years earlier.
That’s far from the rover record. NASA’s Opportunity Mars rover put 28.06 miles (4815 km) miles on its odometer while checking out the Red Planet from 2004 to 2018– further than any other robotic has actually taken a trip on the surface area of a world beyond Earth.
Mike Wall is the author of “ Out There(opens in brand-new tab)” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; highlighted by Karl Tate), a book about the look for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall(opens in brand-new tab) Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom(opens in brand-new tab) and on Facebook(opens in brand-new tab)