Written by Sama Labib
Wednesday, 05 April 2023 08:00 PM
NASA’s Mars Helicopter Ingenuity set two world records on its latest flight.
And while moving Mars sky On Sunday, April 2, Creativity took off at 6.5 meters per second at 15 mph, comfortably beating the previous record of 6 meters and 13 mph set in February, according to Digital Trends.
The helicopter reached a height of 52.5 feet (16 meters), breaking the previous record of 46 feet (14 meters) it set in December.
The achievement further validates the impressive work of building the 4-pound, 19-inch-tall helicopter, which has now completed 49 flights on Earth. Red planet.
When Intelligence arrives at Mars with the Persistence rover in February 2021, the main goal of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory — home of the team overseeing the mission — is to see if it can control flight in an atmosphere much thinner than Earth’s.
After entering the history books with its maiden flight in April 2021, the team’s confidence grew as it sent the Crew on long, high and fast journeys across the rocky surface of Mars.
And all of the plane’s flights are self-driving, powered by the aircraft’s internal guidance, navigation and control systems that run algorithms developed by the JPL team.
The ingenuity was so good that JPL began collecting data using its downward-facing camera, helping the diligent team find the safest and most efficient paths as the probe weaves between sites of interest, looking for evidence of ancient microbial life.
It hasn’t all been smooth sailing for Ingenuity, as JBL engineers have had to solve a number of technical problems that have plagued the flying machine over the past two years.
Now that the helicopter is approaching its 50th flight, scheduled for Wednesday, it has exceeded NASA’s expectations, and we’ll see improved versions of the creation rumbling across the surface of Mars in the coming years.
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