NASA’s Mars helicopter ingenuity It is preparing for its eleventh flight beyond Earth, which could happen on Thursday morning (August 5).
Agility 4 pounds (1.8 kg) landed with perseverance explorer Inside the Jezzero Crater on Mars on February 18. Six weeks later, a tiny helicopter emerges from Perseverance’s underbelly and begins a month-long flight campaign to prove that aerial exploration is possible on the Red Planet.
Work outperformed all five flights during this stretch, so NASA gave the project an extended mission focused on demonstrating the exploration potential of a Mars helicopter. The helicopter has completed five long mission flights so far, and is atop another one.
Video: Watch Ingenuity explore the exciting “Raised Ridges” in a new video
The creative team is preparing for the next helicopter mission, which will be its eleventh number on the red planet. The flight will take off at about 12:33 p.m. Mars time the day before, possibly tomorrow morning (August 5), Josh Ravic, head of mechanical engineering at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, wrote in Renew Published today (August 4). He added that if tomorrow is ready, then take-off at 12:50 EDT (0450 GMT) will be postponed.
The ingenuity will climb to an altitude of 39 feet (12 m), then sail to the new airport at about 1,260 feet (385 m), reaching a top speed of about 11 mph (18 km/h) in the process. Ravic wrote that the flight would take about 130 seconds.
Although creativity will take some pictures during Flight 11, the main goal is to transport a small helicopter to this new airport, to explore the south of Sitt, part of the exotic region. sand ripples which is difficult for the great explorer to traverse its rough terrain.
“At the request of the Scientific Perseverance Team, the new site” will “become a staging area for at least one expedition to the geologically interesting area south of Sitah,” Ravish wrote. Good luck and see you in South Sitah! “
Perseverance, meanwhile, prepares for major milestones in his mission: Collecting the first Mars samples. The vehicle-sized spacecraft will capture dozens of samples of the Red Planet, which will be flown back to Earth by a joint NASA-European Space Agency campaign, possibly as early as 2031.
Perseverance currently lies in an area called the “Crater Floor Rough Crack”, which features rocks that the mission team believes are as old as Jezero Crater itself. But rover therapists plan to set sail and investigate nearby South Sittah, if possible, in the relatively near future.
Mike Wall is the author of “Overseas(Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustration by Karl Tate), a book about the search for alien life. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.
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