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Why it issues: NASA has prolonged flight operations for its Ingenuity Mars Helicopter by means of September because the craft continues to exceed expectations. It’ll now function a scout for Perseverance, serving to NASA resolve which route the ground-based rover ought to take because it traverses the Jezero Crater.
Ingenuity landed on Mars together with the Perseverance rover on February 18, 2021, and accomplished its first flight roughly two months later.
NASA initially designed Ingenuity to fly as much as 5 instances throughout a 30-day take a look at marketing campaign, partially to find out if managed flight of an plane on Mars was even doable. The helicopter quickly proved it was greater than able to assembly NASA’s expectations, so extra time was added to its proverbial clock.
Ingenuity lately accomplished its twenty first flight, the primary of no less than three that will probably be obligatory to maneuver the helicopter to a brand new staging space close to the bottom of the Jezero Crater. Once it arrives, NASA will use the copter to scout potential routes for its Perseverance rover to succeed in the identical space by land.
Teddy Tzanetos, Ingenuity group lead at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, stated the Jezero marketing campaign would be the largest problem but for the Ingenuity group since its first flight. “To improve our probabilities of success, now we have elevated the dimensions of our group and are making upgrades to our flight software program geared towards bettering operational flexibility and flight security,” Tzanetos added.
To date, the plane has logged over 38 minutes of flight time on Mars and traveled practically three miles. Due to how lengthy it takes radio alerts to journey from Earth to Mars, Ingenuity must be operated autonomously with maneuvers pre-planned and programmed in forward of time.
Ingenuity’s subsequent flight is scheduled for no sooner than March 19.
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