Nasa’s Mars helicopter completes record breaking flight
The award-winning craft just set another record in the skies above the Red Planet
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Your support makes all the difference.Nasa’s Ingenuity helicopter just completed its 25th flight on the Red Planet, flying further and faster than ever before.
On April 8, the 1.8-kilogram, dual rotor helicopter lifted off the Martian surface to execute a flight plan prepared by the Ingenuity team at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, traveling 704 metres at about 5.5 metres-per-second to explore a dry river delta within the Jezero Crater.
The new record-setting flight is a far cry from Ingenuity’s first flight on 19 April 2021, when the helicopter merely hovered for 30 seconds. It’s also a significant improvement on Ingenuity’s previous best flight on 5 July 2201, which covered 625 meters of Martian ground.
Ingenuity first arrived on Mars on 18 February 2021 carried by Nasa’s Perseverance rover. After demonstrating the first-ever powered, controlled flight on another world — something scientists weren’t sure would work until it did — Ingenuity has served as an aerial scout for the rover as the two explore Jezero Crater. A site once believed to have held water, the crater could hold signs of past or present Martian life — if it exists or ever existed.
For the continually record-setting Ingenuity mission and its contributions to aerospace technology, the Ingenuity team was recently awarded the prestigious Collier Trophy, an award given annually to recognize American achievements in aerospace since 1911. Past recipients include Orville Wright (of the Wright Brothers) and the crew of Apollo 11.
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