The helicopter has covered almost 4.3 km in a year
NEW YORK, March 1. /tass/. The Ingenuity helicopter has already completed 20 flights during its year on Mars, covering a total of 4,227 meters. This was announced on Tuesday on its website by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) of the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), located in Pasadena, California.
"The twentieth flight [Ingenuity] was successful on February 25. In 130.3 seconds of being in the air, he flew 391 meters at a speed of 4.4 m / s, getting even closer to the landing site of the Perseverance rover," noted the JPL, which is responsible for the implementation of this project.
Perseverance was delivered to the Jezero crater along with a helicopter on February 18 last year. Their task is to try to find traces of the possible existence of life on the planet in the distant past.
The development of Ingenuity, which weighs 1.8 kg, cost $80 million. The device made its first flight on Mars on April 19, it rose to a height of 3 meters and was in the air for only 39.1 seconds. During the ninth flight, which took place on July 5, the helicopter set several records at once, moving 625 meters without landing in 2 minutes 46 seconds. During these missions, Ingenuity, using a camera installed on it, took color images that are sent to NASA through the antennas on the rover.
NASA uses Ingenuity to study those areas of the crater where a six-wheeled rover cannot reach, as well as to create three-dimensional maps of the surface of Mars and solve other scientific problems. In addition, information about how Ingenuity behaves on the planet is intended to help in the development of the next Martian helicopter. It will be larger in size, it will be equipped with six rotors. It is assumed that the weight of the device will be approximately 30 kg.
