“It’s 86 degrees below zero, I’m still alive”… Mars helicopter flies after two months
Humanity's first extraterrestrial powered airplane made its 30th flight from Mars.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) announced that the small Helicopter on Mars had flew again on the 20th, two months after completing its 29th flight. The 29th flight took place on 11 June.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Lab posted on Twitter an in-flight photo of Ingnuity's one leg and the surface of Mars, saying, "Breaking the two-month hiatus and confirming that the helicopter is still alive through a short flight over the weekend and dust from the solar panels. He was able to get rid of it.
2 meters in 33 seconds... not an easy flight
NASA designed this flight to fly 2 meters in 33 seconds. But I didn't expect it to be easy.
Robot exploration is an example where persistence is active, because the delta area of the crater was winter and the solar panel was more dusty and the battery could not be properly charged. According to NASA, temperatures in the region now drop to minus 86 degrees at night. Prior to the flight, NASA tested the wing's rotational force for a few seconds each on August 6 and 15.
As the 100-day winter gradually passes, the state of charge of Incinuity has improved, and Nasa expects that it will be able to go out to reconnaissance in the delta within a few months. To this end, it plans to upgrade its flight software in September.
Total flight distance 7km in 1 year and 4 months
Since its first flight on April 19, last year, Injinuity, weighing 1.8 kg, has gone beyond its original goal of five test flights, and has been conducting reconnaissance flights to fulfill the mission of the robot exploration vehicle Perseverance.
The flight altitude was 5 to 12 meters, the flight speed averaged 5.5 meters per second, and the flight distance was 100 to 625 meters. So far, the total flight time is 55.4 minutes and the flight distance is 7.08 km. Now, beyond the simple test flight phase, it is conducting a pre-field mission to aid persistence in its journey.
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Perseverance, which landed on Mars on February 18 last year, has run 11.9 km so far and has been conducting exploration and sample collection activities in the delta since last May. The number of samples collected so far is 12, which is 34% of the target of 38.
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