NASA has just unveiled some amazing new images from its Ingenuity helicopter on a record flight to the Red Planet last month.
The video for the Mars Ingenuity helicopter, which was recorded on April 8 but released on May 27, shows the small Red Planet helicopter flying at a distance of 2,310 feet (704 meters) at a speed 12 mph (19 mph), with a view of Red Sands purring below.
“For our record-breaking flight, the ingenuity downhill camera gave us an awesome sense of how it would feel,” Teddy Tzanetos, leader of NASA’s Ingenuity Jet Propulsion Laboratory team, said Friday in Pasadena (opens in a new tab) (May 27).
The footage goes back to Ingenious Flight 25, when it flew faster and farther than ever with a maximum altitude of 10 meters, roughly the equivalent height of a three-story house.
Related: 1 year later, the Ingenuity helicopter is still strong on Mars
NASA’s Ingenuity Mars helicopter made a record 25th flight on April 18, 2022. (Image credit: NASA / JPL-Caltech)
Ingenuity sends its data to the Perseverance rover, which delivers the information by radio to a passing Mars orbit. The data is then transmitted from Mars to NASA’s deep space network on Earth.
Because videos are larger than images, it takes a while to send things over interplanetary networks, and operational data must come first in missions, which probably explains some of the delay in receiving images.
The nearly 30-second video clip begins about a second after the flight, JPL said. Shows the helicopter moving southwest to reach its maximum speed in the next three seconds.
“The helicopter first flies over a group of sand waves and then, in the middle of the video, several rock fields,” JPL said. “Finally, relatively flat, unpaved terrain appears below, providing a good landing site.”
The total flight time of 161.3 seconds was accelerated five times in the images, JPL added. The navigation camera has also been turned off before landing properly, to prevent dust from interfering with the navigation system when the helicopter is about three feet (1 meter) from the surface.
Ingenuity is currently recovering from a dust fault-induced communications failure, but should soon be ready to attempt a 29th above-surface excursion, JPL added.
“Now that the aircraft is in contact again and getting the proper energy from its solar array to charge its six lithium-ion batteries, the team is looking forward to its next flight to Mars,” JPL said. of Ingenuity.
The small helicopter has nearly doubled its initial five-flight manifesto and is on an extended mission as it accompanies the life-seeking Perseverance rover. The rover and helicopter landed together in Jezero Crater on February 18, 2021.
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