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Mini heli has traveled miles in thin Mars air and reaches record high

With the mini flights, the American space agency NASA explores the area around Perseverance. For example, the tenth flight was intended to photograph a number of ridges that may be of interest for later research.

It was the most complicated flight yet in the thin Martian sky, according to NASA, as Ingenuity had to fly past ten predetermined points, so-called waypoints.

With the flights, NASA also wants to investigate whether it is possible in the future to send a larger helicopter to Mars that can reach places that are inaccessible for Mars rovers.

‘Brothers Wright moment’

Beforehand, there was a lot of uncertainty about what was possible with the mini-heli. Never before had a helicopter been able to fly through the sky on another planet.

There were all sorts of other unpredictable things. Such as the low air pressure and temperatures on Mars, as well as the battery capacity of the heli, which is charged with solar energy. The helicopter was therefore mainly taken to experiment with. Initially, no more than four flights were planned.

The success of the first flight on April 19 was, according to NASA, a “Brothers Wright Moment”. It is not for nothing that the lightweight helicopter received a small piece of fabric from the Wright Flyer. The Wright brothers made the first powered flight on Earth in 1903 with this aircraft.

Since the first flight, NASA has updated the mini-heli’s software twice, improving the quality of the photos and making the drone fly more stable.

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