Ingenuity Mars helicopter tests new software on 37th Red Planet flight (video)

December 21, 2022

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NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter flew for the thirty seventh time on Saturday (Dec. 17), acing a hop designed partially to check the capabilities of its new software program.

Ingenuity stayed aloft for 55 seconds and lined 203 ft (62 meters) of Purple Planet floor on the flight, which was its third this month.

The primary objectives of Saturday’s sortie have been for Ingenuity “to reposition itself and check new flight software program capabilities,” officers with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, which manages Ingenuity’s mission, said via Twitter (opens in new tab) on Monday (Dec. 19).

Associated: Soar over Mars rover tracks with Ingenuity helicopter (video)

NASA’s Mars helicopter Ingenuity captured this photograph with its navigation digicam on Dec. 17, 2022, throughout its thirty seventh Purple Planet flight. (Picture credit score: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

That new software program, which was put in final month, permits Ingenuity to keep away from hazards throughout touchdown and to make use of digital elevation maps for navigation functions, mission group members have said (opens in new tab).

The rotorcraft landed on the ground of the Purple Planet’s Jezero Crater in February 2021 with NASA’s Perseverance rover, which is attempting to find indicators of previous Mars life and amassing samples for future return to Earth.

Ingenuity’s main mission was to point out that aerial exploration is feasible on Mars regardless of its thin atmosphere, which is simply 1% as dense as that of Earth at sea degree. The helicopter wrapped up that activity over the course of 5 flights within the spring of 2021, then transitioned to an prolonged mission on which it is serving as a scout for Perseverance.

Ingenuity has now traveled a total of 24,867 ft (7,479 m) and stayed airborne for almost 62 minutes throughout its 37 Purple Planet flights, in accordance with the mission’s flight log (opens in new tab). These numbers ought to proceed to extend for some time, for the chopper stays in good well being, group members have mentioned.

Ingenuity’s success is paving the best way for future rotorcraft missions to the Purple Planet. JPL is growing ideas for bigger, extra bold Mars helicopters that would gather science data, for instance. And NASA plans to launch two Ingenuity-like craft to the Purple Planet later within the 2020s to assist deliver Perseverance’s samples residence to Earth.

The baseline plan for the Mars sample-return marketing campaign requires Perseverance to ship its samples to a rocket-equipped lander. That rocket will launch the samples to Mars orbit, the place a European spacecraft will snag them and haul them to Earth, maybe as early as 2033.

The helicopters will fly on the lander as a backup: If Perseverance is not in a position to ship the samples itself, the choppers will ferry them to the lander from depots on Jezero’s floor. (Perseverance is taking two samples from every of its goal rocks; it’s going to retailer one set of samples on its physique and cache the opposite set in depots.)

Mike Wall is the creator of “Out There (opens in new tab)” (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a e book concerning the seek for alien life. Observe him on Twitter @michaeldwall (opens in new tab). Observe us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) and on Facebook (opens in new tab).