The Mars helicopter "Ingenuity" made its fourteenth flight, thus confirming that the problem with the skew machine has been eliminated. During the flight, the propellers were unscrewed more than before — this means that the drone is able to fly at a lower atmospheric density, [...] NASA tweeted.
In seven months of work on Mars, "Ingenuity" made 14 flights, although initially only 5 were planned. The drone showed high survivability, not only overcoming difficult routes, but also successfully coping with major failures in its work, thanks to this, at first its scientific program was expanded, and then extended indefinitely.
Due to the decrease in the density of the Martian atmosphere due to the change of seasons in September of this year, the drone team decided to increase the speed of rotation of the propellers during the fourteenth flight, but it never took place — there were problems with the automatic skew. Engineers did not have time to solve the problem before the onset of the upper connection of the Sun and Mars, breaking the connection, so they postponed the flight indefinitely.
On October 19, 2021, the Perseverance and Ingenuity rover restored communication with the Earth, after which the drone successfully completed a trial spin of the screws up to 50 revolutions per minute. The fourteenth flight itself took place on October 23 and was a "jump" five meters up, during which the screws were spun up to higher revolutions than usual. After that, the drone landed 2.75 meters from the launch point. Thus, engineers have confirmed the helicopter's ability to fly at a lower atmospheric density on the Red Planet.
China has also become interested in Martian drones - earlier it presented a prototype of its unmanned vehicle.
Alexander Voityuk