Reportedly, NASA has published dramatic footage of the Ingenuity Mars helicopter completing its record-breaking 25th flight, where the helicopter covered a distance of 704 metres at a speed of 5.5 metres per second, marking the rotorcraft’s longest and fastest flight to date.
Ingenuity is a small solar-powered helicopter that landed on the surface of Mars on February 18, 2021, along with the Perseverance Rover. It completed the world’s first powered extraterrestrial flight on April 19 when it took off, hovered and landed for a flight duration of 39.1 seconds.
For our record-breaking flight, Ingenuity’s downward-looking navigation camera provided us with a breathtaking sense of what it would feel like gliding 33 feet above the surface of Mars at 12 miles per hour,” said Ingenuity team lead Teddy Tzanetos of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, in a press statement.
The video clip starts about one second into the flight. The rotorcraft reaches an altitude of 10 metres and heads southwest, accelerating to its maximum speed in less than three seconds. It first flew over a group of sand ripples and some rock fields. Towards the end, a flat and featureless terrain appears, providing a good landing spot for Ingenuity. The approximately 162 seconds long flight footage was sped up about five times, reducing the video’s length to less than 35 seconds.
The rotorcraft’s navigation camera has been programmed to deactivate whenever the rotorcraft is within 1 metre of the surface. This is to ensure that any dust kicked up during takeoff and landing doesn’t interfere with the navigation system as it tracks geographical features on the ground.
Earlier this month, NASA had announced that it had momentarily lost contact with the helicopter after it entered a low-power state. It later got back in contact after getting adequate energy from its solar array; helping it charge its six lithium-ion batteries.
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