SoylentNews

Woodherd [soylentnews.org] writes:

So it says at The Register [theregister.com], Blimey British Tabloid that it is.

NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter was designed to fly just five times, but last week the little rotorcraft that could clocked up its 50th flight in the red planet’s thin atmosphere.

Flight 50 departed Airfield Lambda on April 13th and required 145.7 seconds to reach Airfield Mu, a 322-meter flight at a brisk 4.6 meters per second, cruising at a new height record of 18 meters above Martian soil.

On The Register’s analysis of NASA’s flight log Ingenuity’s records are:

        Longest duration flight – 169.5 seconds on August 16th, 2021, during flight 12
        Longest distance – 704 meters on April 8th, 2022, during flight 25
        Fastest flight – 6.5 meters per second on April 2nd, 2023, during flight 49
        Total flight time – 5,349.9 seconds, or just over 89 minutes
        Total horizontal flight distance – 11,546 meters

“When we first flew, we thought we would be incredibly lucky to eke out five flights,” said Teddy Tzanetos, Ingenuity team lead at JPL, in a blog post celebrating the 50th flight . “We have exceeded our expected cumulative flight time since our technology demonstration wrapped by 1,250 percent and expected distance flown by 2,214 percent.”

The Ingenuity team is now planning a 51st flight to bring the ‘copter close to the “Fall River Pass” region of Jezero Crater. Future flights will head towards “Mount Julian,” from where the craft will enjoy panoramic views of the nearby Belva Crater, an 800-metre dent in Mars’ surface.

Scotty, canna ye give more power to the main engines?

Original Submission