NASA MARS HELICOPTER’S SECOND FLIGHT IS A SUCCESS
NASA’s engineers already made history on Monday with the 39.1-second flight of Ingenuity, a small helicopter, in the thin atmosphere on Mars. On Thursday, they added to their success when the experimental vehicle’s second flight was higher, longer and riskier.
At 2:33 a.m. Pacific time — it was 12:33 p.m. in Jezero crater on Mars — Ingenuity autonomously lifted again off the red surface of Mars, kicking up a cloud of dust as it ascended. It reached a height of 16 feet, tilted itself by 5 degrees to move 7 feet sideways, hovered and turned to point its color camera in multiple directions, then returned to its starting point to land.
The flight lasted 59.1 seconds.
“It sounds simple, but there are many unknowns regarding how to fly a helicopter on Mars,” Håvard
Grip, Ingenuity’s chief pilot, said in a NASA news release. “That’s why we’re here — to make these unknowns known.”
The Ingenuity helicopter is a demonstration of a new aerial capability that NASA could use in future years. It was added to Perseverance,
a rover that cost billions of dollars to send to Mars to search for signs of extinct microbial life. Although the small rotorcraft cost a fraction of the mission that carried it — $85 million — it packs sophisticated computer hardware and software.
In its first flight, on Monday, Ingenuity rose to a height of 10 feet before pivoting 90 degrees and landing almost exactly where it started. But the short hop was the first powered flight by a helicopter on another world, and extended NASA’s list of distinctions on Mars.
It also reinforced how the solar system’s mysteries can be unlocked with modes of transportation beyond robotic surface rovers and orbiting satellites.
The Ingenuity team has little time to spare to complete its test program. NASA allocated only 30 Martian days — about 31 Earth days — for up to five test flights. MiMi Aung, the project’s manager, said Monday that she hoped that on its last flight, the helicopter may travel as far as 2,300 feet from its starting point.