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NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter has reached an important milestone. Nearly two Earth years after its first flight on the red planet, Ingenuity has completed its 50th flight. That’s especially impressive for an aircraft developed as a mere technology demo, but we have already seen Ingenuity change the direction of NASA’s upcoming Mars missions.
Ingenuity rode to Mars strapped to the belly of the Perseverance rover. NASA engineers built Ingenuity mainly using off-the-shelf parts, including a Snapdragon 801 smartphone processor. Usually, spaceflight hardware is custom and built with electronic shielding and redundant systems due to the harsh environment. Therefore, NASA was skeptical that Ingenuity would last very long on Mars, predicting it would stop working during the planet’s long winter. However, it’s springtime on Mars, and Ingenuity is still going strong.
The 50th flight took place on April 13, which was the mission’s 763rd Martian day (sol). The helicopter lifted off from Airfield Lamda, traveling 1,057.09 feet (322.2 meters) in 145.7 seconds to land at Airfield Mu — NASA started by giving each airfield a name, then a letter, and then it ran out of letters. So, we’re on to the Greek alphabet. That’s a testament to the robustness of this design. “When we first flew, we thought we would be incredibly lucky to eke out five flights,” said JPL’s Teddy Tzanetos, who leads the Ingenuity team. “We have exceeded our expected cumulative flight time since our technology demonstration wrapped by 1,250% and expected distance flown by 2,214%.”
Ingenuity is designed to be lightweight and resilient, so it only has low-power communication equipment on board. It relies on Perseverance for its interplanetary uplink, and the rover has its own work to do. Perseverance recently left the floor of Jezero Crater, climbing up on the ancient river delta that fed a lake during Mars’ wetter era. Ingenuity has followed it up the delta, completing 11 takeoffs and landings on this rougher terrain. Despite all its been through, NASA and JPL confirm the helicopter is holding up well—the solar panels, rotors, and batteries are all still working like new.
Over the past few months, NASA has advanced plans to send a mission to retrieve the rock samples collected by Perseverance. The rover has been leaving caches of sample tubes on the surface if it cannot meet up with the eventual Mars Sample Return lander. Initially, NASA intended to send a small rover to scoop up those tubes, but it revamped the plans to include two Ingenuity-like helicopters. Given the success of Ingenuity, these won’t be the last robots to fly through the Martian atmosphere.
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