Technology
space /
USA
Mars exploration
Ingenuity flies for the seventh time on the Red Planet
Imagem do sétimo voo do Ingenuity divulgada pela JPL no Twitter
Divulgação/Twitter @NASAJPL
Gabriela Ramos
6/13/2021
Last Tuesday, June 8, NASA announced the completion of the seventh flight of the Ingenuity helicopter on Mars. The aircraft flew for over a hundred meters and landed in a completely new region. The date the flight took place was not disclosed.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which announced the helicopter's flight, said the flight was again a success and was the second in the demonstration phase of operations.
According to information posted on the profile @NASAJPL on Twitter, the flight lasted 62.8 seconds and traveled 106 meters in a southerly direction, having landed in a new location. In the same tweet, an image of the helicopter was released.
Unlike this flight, Ingenuity's sixth flight, which lasted 140 minutes – the longest so far – registered some irregularities, but nothing that prevented a safe landing. Fortunately, the seventh flight had no complications.
While Ingenuity's sixth flight registered the record for longest duration, the fourth was the one that covered the longest distance.
This is the second time that Ingenuity has landed in a different location than the take-off location. The information provided by the HiRISE camera, in the orbiter Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, was what made it possible to land in this new location, since, through the images, it was found that the region was safe for landing, as it was a flat land without biggest obstacles.
Ingenuity's mission had been created to perform only five flights, but the helicopter's performance surprised engineers, who didn't expect it to be able to fly more than that. NASA then decided to extend the mission to be able to test the aircraft. Thus, Ingenuity will continue to fly on Mars as long as it has the conditions to do so.
NASA has provided an interactive map in which it is possible to follow the trajectory of Ingenuity and Perseverance, the rover that in addition to following the helicopter, communicating with it and documenting its flights, also performs rock analysis and other exploration activities on Mars . The map uses the same software NASA uses to choose which locations Perseverance will explore next and how to get there.
Check out the map at the link below.
Divulgação/Nasa
Hyperlinks:
https://mars.nasa.gov/mars2020...
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Gabriela Ramos
Gabriela is the latest addition to the editorial team of our website, having provided us with her solid background in editing, publishing and photography, and her interest and training in aviation history and historiography. His good taste and common sense and great cleverness and sagacity in the selection of themes and materials greatly enriched our vocabulary and narrative style. Gabriela brought unusual predicates and came to stay, helping to point the way of success of our portal.
   
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