Ingenuity helicopter sets altitude record on 35th Mars flight - Space.com

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NASA's Ingenuity chopper keeps raising the barroom for Red Planet flight.

The 4-pound (1.8 kilograms) Ingenuity soared 46 feet (14 meters) supra Mars' reddish ungraded connected Saturday (Dec. 3), mounting a caller altitude grounds connected its 35th off-Earth flight.

The small chopper's erstwhile grounds was 39 feet (12 m), achieved connected 3 erstwhile Mars flights. (You tin get a rundown of each 35 Ingenuity sorties successful the mission's flight log (opens successful caller tab).)

An all-time precocious for the #MarsHelicopter!Ingenuity completed Flight 35 implicit the play and acceptable a caller max altitude record, hitting 46 ft (14 meters) supra the Martian surface. See much stats successful the formation log: https://t.co/7DMHj9LkNX pic.twitter.com/qAj5H9Z68CDecember 6, 2022

Ingenuity landed with NASA's Perseverance rover connected the level of Jezero Crater successful February 2021. The chopper soon deployed from the rover's belly and embarked connected a run to amusement that powered formation is imaginable successful the bladed Mars atmosphere.

That archetypal technology-demonstrating signifier lasted little than a period and consisted of conscionable 5 sorties. But NASA soon granted Ingenuity a ngo extension, keeping the rotorcraft flying. Its existent objectives halfway connected pushing the envelope of Red Planet formation and performing reconnaissance for Perseverance.

The rover is searching for signs of past Mars life connected the level of the 28-mile-wide (45 kilometers) Jezero, which hosted a water and a stream delta billions of years ago. Perseverance is besides collecting and caching a bid of samples, which a associated NASA-European Space Agency run volition instrumentality to Earth, possibly as aboriginal arsenic 2033.

Saturday's formation was the archetypal for Ingenuity since Nov. 22 and conscionable the 2nd it has performed since a major bundle update. That update, which took respective weeks to install, "provides Ingenuity 2 large caller capabilities: hazard avoidance erstwhile landing and the usage of integer elevation maps to assistance navigate," ngo squad members wrote successful a blog station precocious past month (opens successful caller tab).

Ingenuity covered astir 49 feet (15 m) of horizontal region connected Saturday's flight, which lasted 52 seconds. The chopper has present traveled a full of 24,302 feet (7,407 m) and stayed aloft for 59.9 minutes connected its 35 Mars sorties, according to the ngo formation log.

Mike Wall is the writer of "Out There (opens successful caller tab)" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), a publication astir the hunt for alien life. Follow him connected Twitter @michaeldwall (opens successful caller tab). Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens successful caller tab) and connected Facebook (opens successful caller tab).

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Michael Wall is simply a Senior Space Writer with Space.com (opens successful caller tab) and joined the squad successful 2010. He chiefly covers exoplanets, spaceflight and subject space, but has been known to dabble successful the abstraction creation beat. His publication astir the hunt for alien life, "Out There," was published connected Nov. 13, 2018. Before becoming a subject writer, Michael worked arsenic a herpetologist and wildlife biologist. He has a Ph.D. successful evolutionary biology from the University of Sydney, Australia, a bachelor's grade from the University of Arizona, and a postgraduate certificate successful subject penning from the University of California, Santa Cruz. To find retired what his latest task is, you tin travel Michael connected Twitter.

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