The Ingenuity teams attempted and succeeded in a second test flight of their small helicopter this Thursday. During this maneuver, the rotorcraft rose about five meters from the ground.
This Monday, April 19, NASA once again made history by making a successful first powered flight on another planet. During this test, Ingenuity rose just over three meters off the ground for 39.1 seconds before landing successfully, according to altimeter data. Obviously, the mission team was delighted.
"Every image we get of the helicopter is special to me:after all, it's never been done before “said MiMi Aung, Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Project Manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. "But I have to say that of all the images, the one that will stick with me the most is from the helicopter's navigation camera:taken while the rotorcraft was 1.2 meters in the air “.
This photo, taken in black and white, depicts the projected shadow of Ingenuity while it is hovering. "Everyone will decide what the historical significance of this image is, but when I first saw it, I immediately thought of Buzz Aldrin's footprint photographed on the lunar surface “, continues MiMi Aung. “This iconic image of Apollo 11 said 'we walked on the Moon'; ours says "we flew to another world “.
This Thursday, the mission teams attempted a second, more ambitious test.
For this test, the flight plan was as follows:the rotorcraft was to rise about five meters from the ground, then move laterally two meters. He then had to hover in place before spinning around several times so that his color camera could take pictures. He finally had to return to the center of the airfield to attempt a new landing.
As a reminder, this is all done on its own. For this test, the flight commands were therefore sent to Ingenuity, which was to be responsible for executing them. And again, everything went well.
For this second test, Ingenuity took off at 12:30 p.m. (French time). As for the first time, we had to wait a few hours to get the first returns, the time for the helicopter to transfer its data to Perseverance, which was to relay them to a probe in orbit. This data was then sent to NASA antennas. Here is the image taken during its flight. Others should follow in the next few hours:
This second flight was operated on the 18th day of 30 days offered to the mission team to test Ingenuity. Over the next fortnight, engineers will attempt to push the limits of their protege, paving the way for other similar vehicles to be deployed on future missions.
