Last April, the first flight of a helicopter took place on a planet other than Earth. Now NASA has set a new record.
Over the past year, Ingenuity has tested several variants and shown that its capabilities are more impressive than originally assumed. And the agency announced, on Friday, that the helicopter’s navigation camera captured the 25th flight path. It happened on April 8, the creativity covered a distance of 704 meters, and its speed reached 5.5 meters per second.
Read also: Helicopter in the sky of Mars. This is how Ingenuity does it millions of miles from home
As mission team leader Teddy Zanitos explains, Ingenuity’s navigation camera provided stunning footage of what it looks like to slide 10 meters above the surface of Mars at nearly 20 kilometers per hour.
The first creative flight to Mars took place in April of last year
And although the video is black and white, we can see a group of sand waves appearing more or less in the middle of the movie. Creativity flies above them. The helicopter continued its flight until it noticed a relatively flat and featureless terrain on which it was able to land. The flight lasted exactly 161.3 seconds, although the recording was sped up to only 35 seconds.
Read also: The Mars probe took a picture of itself. Historic because the last
When it comes to technical matters, creativity moves independently. To communicate with Earth, it must first communicate with the base station aboard the Mars Perseverance rover. This then transmits the data to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO), a probe orbiting Mars. The MRO sends the data to NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN) satellites, which send it back to scientists from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Echo Richards embodies a personality that is a delightful contradiction: a humble musicaholic who never brags about her expansive knowledge of both classic and contemporary tunes. Infuriatingly modest, one would never know from a mere conversation how deeply entrenched she is in the world of music. This passion seamlessly translates into her problem-solving skills, with Echo often drawing inspiration from melodies and rhythms. A voracious reader, she dives deep into literature, using stories to influence her own hardcore writing. Her spirited advocacy for alcohol isn’t about mere indulgence, but about celebrating life’s poignant moments.
