NASA’s Ingenuity Helicopter Makes Second Successfully Trip to Mars

NASA’s Integrity helicopter did successfully trip over the surface of Mars on Thursday Morning, 22 April 2021.

Ingenuity made its ariel debut with a 3 metric hoover on Monday, 19 April 2021,  the first controlled powered flight ever conducted on another planet. The helicopter flew higher and further on Thursday morning, completing its first sideways movements.

The data that Ingenuity has beamed back to NASA so far has met every expectations that researchers have had, and that of prior computer modelling has been found accurate.

The Ingenuity team will want to another three flights with Ingenuity.  They aim to explore caves, canyons, mountains, and or terrains as they could all be the domain of a new generation of space-drone exploration.

The team will try and fly Ingenuity in a few more days, as they now have a deadline of fewer than two weeks to complete up to 3 more daring ariel flights. By the final flight, Ingenuity’s controllers plan to push the helicopter as far and as fast as it will go; in the process, they do expect it will crash.

Researchers do not expect Ingenuity to land safely on its fifth flight when they hope to send it over 609.60 meters of Martian ground.

If there is a bad landing, that will be the end of the mission; the lifetime will be determined by how well it lands.-MiMi Aung, the project manager for Ingenuity

Here is a demonstration of how the Ingenuity Helicopter works:

This is a video from the first flight of Ingenuity:

This a video from the second flight of Ingenuity: