When the Ingenuity Mars helicopter was sent on a one-way trip to the Red Planet, its engineers had a five-flight plan.
This did not mean that no more flights were planned; in fact, it is normal for NASA’s mission parameters to be set conservatively. But late last year, NASA extended the mission indefinitely, and the small helicopter it could have already exceeded its original target: it completed a total of 25 flights in the thin, weak Martian atmosphere.
In fact, he had completed 28 flights at the time of writing, but flight 25 was absolute cork. On April 8, when the flight took place, Ingenuity broke both distance and speed records, rising by 704 meters (2310 feet) and up to 5.5 meters per second (12 miles per hour).
And he sent home images that his staff had already put together in a video showing a robotic helicopter flying through Mars.
“For our record flight, Ingenuity’s downward-facing navigation camera gave us a breathtaking sense of what it would be like to glide 33 feet above the surface of Mars at 12 miles per hour,” said Teddy Tsanetos, engineer and team leader at Ingenuity. from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
The flight lasted 161.3 seconds, but the helicopter did not take pictures for about a second. This is because Ingenuity uses its camera for navigation; does not turn on until the helicopter reaches a height of about 1 meter to avoid confusing the camera with dust raised during takeoff or landing.
In the video, Ingenuity rises to a height of 33 meters before accelerating to the southwest. It reaches its maximum speed of 5.5 meters per second in three seconds. First, the helicopter flies over slightly undulating sand, then over rocky fields, followed by relatively flat and impersonal land on which Ingenuity can make a safe landing.
These flight parameters were preset and sent to Ingenuity by the helicopter pilot team on the ground. Once in the air (as it is), ingenuity is in itself; the delay in time between Earth and Mars means that no adjustments can be made in the middle of the course.
This means that an accidental accident may occur, such as the one we saw a year ago, when a helicopter image processing pipeline error lagged behind what Ingenuity saw and where it actually was in real time. Fortunately, the built-in safety devices allowed Ingenuity to land safely so that NASA engineers could issue a correction before the next flight.
Since then, the flight has been fairly smooth, even in very foreign weather conditions for those here on Earth, and the small helicopter shows no signs of slowing down. The atmospheric volume of Mars is less than 1% of Earth’s; we are still amazed with every flight that people manage to build something that can fly in it. Ingenuity, indeed!
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