Story at a glance
- The helicopter designed to explore the Red Planet successfully carried out its 25th flight last week.
- Ingenuity flew faster and farther than ever before.
- The helicopter hitched a ride to Mars on the Perseverance rover, which is on a two-year mission to roam the planet’s surface in search of signs of ancient life.
NASA made history last year after pulling off the first-ever controlled flight of an aircraft on Mars with its Ingenuity helicopter. Now, nearly a year later, the 4-pound helicopter continues to soar past researchers’ expectations and break records.
The helicopter designed to explore the Red Planet successfully carried out its 25th flight Friday and flew faster and farther than ever before.
According to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Ingenuity flew more than 2,300 feet at more than 12 mph. Previously, the helicopter only reached speeds of about 11 mph and flew just over 2,000 feet. Ingenuity took flight for 161.3 seconds. The longest the aircraft has stayed in the air was 169.5 seconds in August.
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It’s an impressive feat for the Martian rotorcraft that was designed to be a technology demonstration expected to only complete five experimental test flights.
Ingenuity first lifted off the surface of Mars on April 19, 2021, with a “short up-and-down hop” to show powered flight on Mars was in fact possible.
After five successful flights, Ingenuity embarked on a demonstration phase to show how powered flight could be used to study the mysteries of Mars and other planets.
The helicopter hitched a ride to Mars on the Perseverance rover, which is on a two-year mission to roam the planet’s surface in search of signs of ancient life.
NASA is currently working on a drone mission dubbed “Dragonfly” that will send a rotorcraft the size of a car to the surface of Saturn’s largest and richly organic moon, Titan.
The space agency is aiming to launch Dragonfly in 2027 with arrival expected in 2034. The drone will fly to dozens of locations on the icy moon to analyze samples in search of the building blocks of life, and researchers believe the conditions on Titan could provide clues to how life may have arisen on Earth.
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