NASA's Ingenuity helicopter flies on Mars for the 56th time

By Mike Wall published 2 days ago
Ingenuity covered 1,344 feet (410 meters) of ground on the Aug. 26 flight.



NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter acquired this image using its navigation camera on its 56th Red Planet flight, which occurred on Aug. 26, 2023. (Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech)

NASA's Ingenuity Mars helicopter keeps adding to its tally of off-Earth flights.
The 4-pound (1.8 kilograms) Ingenuity flew for the 56th time on Aug. 26, staying aloft for nearly 2.5 minutes on the Mars sortie.

"The #MarsHelicopter completed Flight 56, traveling 1,334 ft (410 m) across the Martian surface at a maximum altitude of ~39 ft (12 m). The goal of this flight was to reposition the helicopter," NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Southern California, which manages the little rotorcraft's mission, wrote via X (formerly Twitter) on Thursday (Aug. 31).

Ingenuity landed with NASA's Perseverance rover inside Mars' Jezero Crater in February 2021. The helicopter quickly aced its five-flight demonstration mission, showing that powered flight is possible on the Red Planet despite its thin atmosphere.

NASA then granted Ingenuity a mission extension, during which the chopper is serving as a scout for the life-hunting, sample-collecting Perseverance. The robotic duo are working together to explore the 28-mile-wide (45 kilometers) Jezero, which hosted a big lake and a river delta billions of years ago.

More:
https://www.space.com/ingenuity-mars-helicopter-flight-56