NASA Mars Ingenuity Helicopter: US space agency NASA’s Mars Ingenuity Helicopter made its highest flight but, which was also the most complicated to date as the space helicopter flew more than the Raised Ridges location of the Red Planet. This marked the tenth flight of the spacecraft, which had been sent by NASA to conduct increasingly tricky autonomous flights as a testing of new technologies. During this flight, Ingenuity covered a horizontal distance of 233 metres or about 764 feet and reached an altitude of 12 metres or 40 feet in a record achievement. Now, the helicopter has collectively covered a distance of more than one mile on all of its flights.
Ingenuity took its tenth flight on July 24, and as per NASA, it was the most complicated one for the spacecraft given that numerous maneuvers have been performed by the space helicopter throughout this flight. Apart from that, it also passed via 10 distinct waypoints.
In this flight, the helicopter flew above the rocky Raised Ridges location in the Jezero Crater, exactly where the Perseverance Rover had landed with Ingenuity attached to its belly in February earlier this year. Raised Ridges is to the south of the landing point of Perseverance, and Ingenuity was sent to scout the location aerially simply because scientists are interested in sending Perseverance to discover this location sometime in the future.
Ingenuity had been made to only undertake 4 flights, but has been in a position to execute more than double of that given that it 1st took off in April, with every single flight growing in complexity. The tenth flight went on for a duration of 165.4 seconds, just about a second brief of its preceding record – Ingenuity flew for 166.5 seconds throughout its ninth flight that it undertook on July 5. Ingenuity flew from Airfield F to Airfield G in the tenth flight, and is now stationed at the latter airfield.