NASA has introduced that plans for its Ingenuity Mars helicopter to make its sixth flight on the Red Planet subsequent week are underway. This comes two weeks after the helicopter made its fifth flight on May 7 when it accomplished its first one-way journey, travelling 423 ft (129 metres), then reaching an altitude of 33 ft (10 metres) above its new touchdown area. The US area company mentioned the sixth flight goes to be the primary to be executed in the course of the helicopter’s operations demonstration part and contains “scouting multiple surface features from the air and landing at a different airfield.”
This is the primary time Ingenuity will likely be by itself, with out the Perseverance rover watching over it. On all its earlier 5 flights, the Perseverance rover had shared visuals of Ingenuity. Following the flight, information and pictures will likely be despatched to Earth.
Shedding gentle on the rotorcraft’s deliberate flight, NASA mentioned the helicopter will ascend to 33 ft (10 metres), after which head southwest for about 492 ft (150 metres). Once it achieves that distance, Ingenuity will begin buying color imagery of an space of curiosity, because it interprets to the south about 50-66 ft (15-20 metres), NASA mentioned in a word on its Mars mission web site.
It added that stereo imagery of the sand ripples and outcrops of brilliant rocks on the website will assist show the worth of an aerial perspective for future missions. Once the rotorcraft completes its picture assortment, it’s to fly about 164 ft (50 metres) northeast the place it would contact down at “Field C,” its new base of operations.
On this flight, NASA expects the Ingenuity to attain a floor velocity of 9mph (4 metres per second) and the time aloft to be round 140 seconds. The company mentioned it is the primary time that the rotorcraft will contact down at an airfield not surveyed earlier than from the air. The Ingenuity staff, NASA says, is counting on imagery collected by the HiRISE digicam aboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. The pictures counsel the Field C is comparatively flat and has few floor obstructions.
NASA shared its plans for the sixth flight of the Mars Ingenuity helicopter simply days after it shared gorgeous 3D visuals of the rotorcraft’s fifth flight, which it took on May 7. The helicopter takes off vertically, hovers for a couple of seconds earlier than zooming previous our eyes to the proper of the display screen. It then returns and lands nearly on the identical spot. The company says that seeing the sequence was nearly like standing on the crimson planet, subsequent to the Perseverance rover, that captured the historic second and watching the helicopter take flight first hand.
The success of the Mars Ingenuity helicopter on the crimson planet proved {that a} powered and managed flight was attainable on Mars. The first-ever Ingenuity flight on the crimson planet was described because the “Wright brothers’ moment on Mars” by mission supervisor MiMi Aung.
