NASA helicopter enters ‘Guinness World Records’ with longest flight on Mars

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Powered and controlled flight covered 704 meters on the Martian surface and was carried out in April 2022. On the same date, Ingenuity also broke ground speed and flight duration records. Photo shows NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter unlocking the rotor blades, allowing them to rotate freely, on April 7. Nasa The mini-helicopter Ingenuity, from NASA, entered the “Guinness World Records” with the longest flight performed on the Martian surface. In 2021, Ingenuity made the historic first powered and controlled flight on the red planet, as part of a US space agency strategy just to assess flight conditions on the planet. Ingenuity, which resembles a drone, weighs 1.8 kg and arrived on Mars folded and attached to the bottom of Perseverance, a NASA robot that landed on the planet in February 2021. A year later, on April 8, 2022, Ingenuity set several records with its 25th flight, when it flew 704 meters across Jezero Crater. Officially, according to Guinness, this was the farthest flight on Mars to date. On the same date, the helicopter also set a new ground speed record (5.5 meters per second) and a new flight duration record (161.3 seconds). So far, Ingenuity has made about 30 experimental flights. Now, NASA and ESA, the European space agency, plan to build and launch at the end of this decade two similar equipment that will transport samples of rocks and soil from Mars to our planet. Animation shows NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter doing a slow rotation test of its propellers on April 8. The image was taken by the Perseverance robot, also from NASA. NASA Back to Earth If all goes as planned, up to 30 samples would be collected in 2031 and would reach Earth in 2033. The Mars Sample Return Program is in the final stages of its project of design, after a review of the initial launch strategy. Before, NASA had the intention of taking a new robot to Mars that would be built by the ESA and that would transport the scientific materials collected by Perseverance (a robot launched together with Ingenuity and that searches for traces of life on the planet) to a rocket manufactured by the Americans. . Now, the mission intends to make Perseverance move on its own to the landing module where that rocket will be parked. However, if the robot fails in this task, that’s where the new helicopters come into play: the two machines being built would carry the Perseverance samples. Rover Perseverance works around a rocky outcrop called “Skinner Ridge” in Mars’ Jezero Crater. Nasa/Press Release According to the Associated Press, NASA program director Jeff Gramling, each helicopter is being designed to transport one sample tube from the robot at a time, making several round trips. “We’re confident we can count on Perseverance to bring the samples back and we’ve added the helicopters as a sort of plan B,” Gramling said. The agencies hope that this new strategy will reduce the complexity of future missions to Mars and increase the probability of success of the space program.

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