Gadgets
NASA’s Ingenuity Helicopter Ready for Its 10th Flight on Mars
NASA said in a note published on its website, that one of the defining aspects of Ingenuity’s last flight, that lasted 2 minute and 46 seconds, was that it successfully negotiated a terrain called “Seitah.” The terrain would have been difficult to cover using a ground vehicle like the Perseverance rover. The tenth flight will investigate “Raised Ridges,” a collection of rock features inside Mars’ Jezero Crater, according to a report by Space.com.
On July 23, NASA also posted a picture of the “Little (Mars) Helicopter” on Instagram. The agency described the ninth flight as a “nail-biter.” It said that the flight was explicitly designed to have science value by providing the first close view of major science targets that the rover will not reach for quite some time.
The post, furthermore, read, “This was made possible by a team of NASA Ames helicopter experts who assisted NASA JPL’s Ingenuity team in making sure the technology demonstrator had the best chance for success in flying in the super-thin atmosphere of the Red Planet.”