NASA’s Creativity Helicopter has achieved its 41st flight.
the cleverness The drone made a quick trip from its rest station and back again on Jan. 27, covering 600 feet (183 meters) in horizontal distance in just 109 seconds.
After the dust has settled at Jezero Crater, Ingenuity is back in its comfort zone at the Airfield Beta, reports Mission flight log (Opens in a new tab). a interval (Opens in a new tab) From the photos taken mid-flight, the shadow of the helicopter can be seen dancing over the dunes.
Related: Fly over the tracks of the Mars probe with an innovative helicopter (video)
Creativity is the mission of aviation plus the size of a NASA vehicle perseverance Mars rover. The rover landed in February 2021 inside Jezero Island, which had a huge ancient lake and river delta and was about 28 miles (45 kilometers) wide.
The rover has been busying itself in recent weeks as it searches for signs of old Mars life In the area, they are going down 10 sample tubes As of Monday (30 January). This is a backup cache of material, as Perseverance has double samples from different locations hidden in its abdomen. One of the groups will be returned to Earth Early in the year 2033.
The initial plan would task Perseverance with transporting the samples directly to a NASA lander that would ferry the payload into orbit. Failing that, two new Ibdaa helicopters will act as a relief team, picking up samples on the surface for return on a joint NASA/ESA campaign.
However, the samples are brought to the probe, and it will then blast off to Mars Orbit to meet a European probe. This spacecraft will return the samples to Earth. (Both the Mars probe and the European probe are expected to launch in the mid-to-late 2020s.)
Flight 41 outsold Ingenuity’s technology demonstration by eight times, as the helicopter was originally tasked with only five flights. Prior to the arrival of Creativity, no human rover had flown on Mars in the United States The planet’s thin atmosphere.
The expanded mission allowed Ingenuity to explore the future for Perseverance, echoing how future missions to Mars are expected to begin. From the air, the helicopter allows scientists to search for interesting science targets or find the best perseverance route to make its way through the rocky, cratered landscape of Jezero.
Elizabeth Howell is co-author of “Why am I taller (Opens in a new tab)? (ECW Press, 2022; with Canadian astronaut Dave Williams), a book on space medicine. Follow her on Twitter @tweet (Opens in a new tab). Follow us on Twitter @tweet (Opens in a new tab) or Facebook (Opens in a new tab).