The Ingenuity human helicopter shows for the first time what it sees when it flies over the Martian soil. Even though its rotors need to spin at 2,400 revolutions per minute to fly in the thin Martian atmosphere, NASA revealed its sightings to the public. Among all NASA missions in recent years, perhaps one of the most interesting for our civilization has been sending vehicles to the surface of Mars. Now, the helicopter flying over the planet has just done something it had never done on the red planet.
This is a complete Ingenuity flight from the helicopter’s point of view
964 Martian days have passed since the Perseverance rover and its small companion Ingenuity arrived at Mars’ Jezero Crater in February 2018. The twin-propeller helicopter made its first flight on April 19, 2021, and completed its 66th flight on April 2 of November. The milestones that Ingenuity has achieved are more than expected at the beginning of the mission. To celebrate, a video has been shared in which it brings together different images captured with its navigation camera.
Indeed, Ingenuity flights 65 and 66 were carried out consecutively and had a distance of 7 meters and just over half a meter respectively, as reflected in the helicopter’s flight log. And if you are wondering why there is such a rush to carry out two flights in such a row, the answer is offered by the North American space agency itself in the publication that we leave you below these lines.
These maneuvers have been necessary to reposition the helicopter for the closure of communications with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, which will last around two weeks. This will occur due to upcoming solar conjunction, that is because the Earth and Mars will be separated by the Sun, so contact cannot be established between both planets.
A video full of surprises
Ingenuity has a camera on its fuselage that points directly downward so it can track the terrain during flight. With this camera, all the images that Twitter user landru79 collected to put together the following video were captured. The video corresponds to Ingenuity flight 64, which took place on October 27 at 10 a.m. on Mars. That day, the NASA helicopter traveled a horizontal distance of 411 meters from a height of less than one and a half meters. Although it is difficult to perceive, the drone travels at a speed relative to the ground of 21 kilometers per hour.
Since its commissioning, the Ingenuity helicopter has flown more than 118 minutes and traveled a total of 15 km. Its speed record is 36 km/h and its elevation record is 24 meters. Although the mission was to last only five flights, Ingenuity continues to fight to the point that NASA is running out of letters to list the successful flights.
This story was written in Spanish by Perla Vallejo in Cultura Colectiva