The Mars helicopter "Ingenuity" made its fifteenth flight in the atmosphere of the Red Planet, which became the first full-fledged flight at very high propeller speeds. The drone flew 406 meters in a little over two minutes and received a number of color images of the surrounding area, according to NASA Twitter.
"Ingenuity" became the first drone sent to explore other planets. Initially, it was planned that he would work for only a month and make five flights. However, seven months after landing on Mars, the helicopter is still working. He managed to complete 15 flights and received almost two thousand images of the surface of Mars. The total flight range of the drone is more than three kilometers, and the time is almost half an hour. The scientific program of the device has recently been extended indefinitely.
During its operation, the drone has shown high survivability, coping with several major failures. The last of them occurred during tests for high-speed promotion of screws — there were problems with the automatic skew. Nevertheless, in the future, the helicopter demonstrated the possibility of a successful flight with the blades spinning up to 2700 revolutions per minute.
On November 6, 2021, Ingenuity made its fifteenth flight, which became the first full-fledged long-duration flight at high propeller speeds. The helicopter flew 406 meters in 128.8 seconds, being at an altitude of 12 meters. During this time, he received ten color photographs of the area. The purpose of this flight was to explore the ledge, near which the Perseverance rover is located. It is expected that in the near future the drone will receive a new software update and will continue to follow the rover to their landing site.
The plan of the 15th flight of the drone. The dot is the initial position of the device, the cross is the position of the rover, the green sectors show the areas that fell on the drone's images.
Image Source: NASA
Earlier we told about the Chinese project of an unmanned helicopter for flights on Mars.
Alexander Voityuk
