NASA Ingenuity drone also completes 41st flight to Mars

In the past few hours we have written about how NASA Perseverance has also deposited the tenth sample (last for this session) on the Martian soil. This step forward will allow the rover to continue the exploration of the river delta that once filled the Jezero crater in the coming months. To do this Perseverance will make use of the help “from the sky” of the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter and its HiRISE camera but also of the baby NASA Ingenuity drone which is continuing to fly up Mars.

Only a few days ago the helicopter completed its 40th flight moving from airfield Z to airfield Beta. A result that until a few years ago was difficult to imagine considering that this drone is the first aircraft to lift off the ground of another planet and that the engineering challenges and unknowns to face were many. Now, several months later, a lot of data has been collected and the challenges have changed. In the past few hours, the completion of the has also been announced 41st flight.

NASA Ingenuity and the 41st flight to Mars

As reported by the 41st flight of NASA Ingenuity it occurred during 689th sol of the Mars 2020 mission (on January 27, 2023). The distance traveled was equal to 183 meters with a maximum altitude of 10 meters and a maximum horizontal speed of 3 m/s for a total duration of 109.1″. The movement took place inside the Beta airfield according to the flight log official.

JPL he has declared on his Twitter account that “Ingenuity took to the air in the Martian skies to provide an aerial view of the area for the NASA Perseverence team. The Mars Helicopter’s round-trip flight covered 183 meters in 109 seconds”. It was therefore not a repositioning flight (the most frequent) but a supervision flight of a new area to be explored for drone And rover.

The latter is given the highest priority considering that it is the most important part of the mission (as well as the most expensive). During the past few hours have been downloaded also new low resolution black and white images from the Navcam and color ones from the RTE (Return To Earth) camera. The landscape that is shown by NASA Ingenuity it is varied and includes areas with rocks that alternate with some sandy areas. A challenge for the rover (less for the drone who can fly over obstacles). The data collected in the past months and in the future will serve to optimize the next generation of Martian drones which will be on the one hand similar to Ingenuity (in the case of the Mars Sample Return mission) and more complex when looking at developing models.