Mars Helicopter Creativity 21 Aces Journey to the Red Planet

The cleverness The number of helicopter flights on the Red Planet has reached 21.

This 4-pound (1.8 kg) NASA helicopter outperformed another Mars The sortie, agency officials announced today (March 11).

Unstoppable #MarsHelicopter! Ingenuity has successfully completed its 21st flight to the Red Planet. The small helicopter flew 370 meters [1,214 feet] at a speed of 3.85 meters per second [8.61 mph] and stayed aloft for 129.2 seconds,” NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which runs the Ingenuity mission, He said on Twitter today.

In February 2021, Ingenuity landed with NASA perseverance rover On the floor of Mars’ Jezero Crater, which hosted a lake and river delta billions of years ago. The solar-powered helicopter initially embarked on a five-flight experimental mission designed to show that atmospheric exploration is possible on Mars despite the planet’s thin atmosphere. (Martian air is only 1% as thick as Earth’s air at sea level.)

Ingenuity outperformed those five flights, and soon NASA Mission Extension Grant. During this stage, the helicopters have been pushing the boundaries of the Red Planet flight and serving as perseverance scouts, whose main tasks include searching for signs of life on Mars and collecting dozens of samples for future return to Earth.

During their first year on Mars, creativity and perseverance explored regions to the south and southwest of their landing site. Both robots are now heading towards the landing area, on their way to an accessible part of the ancient river delta.

The Perseverance team is eager to begin studying the delta closer, because here on Earth deltas are good at preserving organic carbon-containing chemicals and signs of life itself.

During 21 Journey to Mars, Creativity stayed high for a total of 38.8 minutes and traveled 15,246 feet (2.89 miles; 4.65 kilometers). This is a larger area than the Perseverance covered on Mars. odometer for rover It currently reads 2.73 miles (4.39 km).

Mike Wall is the author of “AbroadBook (Great Grand Publishing House, 2018; illustrated by Carl Tate), a book on the search for extraterrestrials. Follow him on Twitter Tweet embed. Follow us on Twitter Tweet embed or on Facebook.