NASA's Ingenuity helicopter hits peak speed on third Mars flight

I find this more amazing than the trips to the moon when you think of how they managed to work out the distance and the calculus to get up to Mars! 

'Nothing short of amazing!' NASA's Ingenuity helicopter successfully completes its third flight, traveling even farther and hitting a new top speed of 4.5mph - four times faster than before.

NASA's mini helicopter on this third flight covered 64ft of distance, rising 16ft before moving sideways 164ft  'Today's flight was what we planned for, and yet it was nothing short of amazing,' said project's leader todayFlights challenging because of conditions vastly different from Earth's, with a much less dense atmosphere 

NASA's mini helicopter Ingenuity on Sunday successfully completed its third flight on Mars, traveling even farther and hitting a peak speed of 4.5mph - four times faster than before. 

After two initial flights during which the craft hovered above the Red Planet's surface, the helicopter on this third flight covered 64ft of distance, rising 16ft before moving sideways 164ft - almost half the length of a football field. 

'Today's flight was what we planned for, and yet it was nothing short of amazing,' said Dave Lavery, the Ingenuity project's program executive

The Perseverance rover, which carried the four-pound rotorcraft to Mars, filmed the 80-second third flight on Mastcam-Z. NASA said Sunday that video clips would be sent to Earth in the coming days.

The lateral flight was a test for the helicopter's autonomous navigation system, which completes the route according to information received beforehand.

 

 

After two initial flights during which the craft hovered above the Red Planet's surface, the helicopter on this third flight (pictured) covered 64ft of distance, rising 16ft before moving sideways 164ft - almost half the length of a football field

 

NASA's Mars Perseverance rover acquired this image using its left Mastcam-Z camera. Mastcam-Z is a pair of cameras located high on the rover's mast. This is one still frame from a sequence captured by the camera while taking video

'If Ingenuity flies too fast, the flight algorithm can't track surface features,' NASA explained in a statement about the flight.

Ingenuity's flights are challenging because of conditions vastly different from Earth's - foremost among them a rarefied atmosphere that has less than one percent the density of our own.

This means that Ingenuity's rotors, which span four feet, have to spin at 2,400 revolutions per minute to achieve lift - about five times more than a helicopter on Earth.

NASA announced it is now preparing for a fourth flight. Each flight is planned to be of increasing difficulty in order to push Ingenuity to its limits.

The Ingenuity experiment will end in one month in order to let Perseverance return to its main task: searching for signs of past microbial life on Mars.

Ingenuity made its first historic flight on Monday April 19, going up 10ft, hovering, snapping a photo, and returning to the newly named 'Wright Brothers Field'.  

Mission project lead, MiMi Aung, said every image of the helicopter on Mars is special, but the most iconic is the one taken by the craft showing its shadow on the surface, something Ingenuity replicated with the second flight.

NASA scientists say they plan to push Ingenuity 'to the limit' with every test flight between now and the end of the flight window in mid-May.  

Asked if NASA wants its helicopter to crash to show it has tested the full range of its capabilities, Aung, said she expects it will 'meet its limit'.

The 19 inch tall and 4ft diameter helicopter will attempt to complete four more test flights involving further distances and higher altitudes in the next two weeks. 

Ingenuity arrived at the Jezero Crater on February 18 after an eight-month journey spanning nearly 300 million miles, tucked inside the belly of Perseverance.

After the spacecraft landed, it dropped the drone on to the ground so Ingenuity could prepare for its maiden flight. 

It is designed to be mostly autonomous, so NASA will not be able to control the helicopter remotely, relying exclusively on the onboard AI to control flight.

This is because of the distance between Earth and Mars – it takes more than 11 minutes to get a radio signal back to Earth.

INGENUITY: THE SMALL ROTORCRAFT THAT TOOK TO THE MARTIAN SKY 

Ingenuity was designed as a technology demonstrator rather than carrying any of its own science experiments or equipment. It rode to Mars attached to the belly of the SUV-size Perseverance rover.

The helicopter took off from the 'Wright Brothers Field' on Monday April 19, making history as the first powered flight on another world.

For the first flight, the helicopter took off, climbed to about 10ft above the ground, hovered in the air briefly, completed a turn, and then landed. 

It is built to be light and strong to survive the harsh Martian environment. It weighs just under 4lb and is only 19 inches tall as it has to fly in the much thinner atmosphere - about 1% that of the atmosphere found on Earth.

It can fly up to 980ft, go up to 15ft in the sky and can spend about 90 seconds in the air before landing. The rotors are 4ft in diameter and the craft includes solar panels that charge lithium-ion batteries. It has a 30 day lifespan, with a total of five flights expected in that time.