NASA's Ingenuity Marcs helicopter has already reached its 20th successful flight in the complex and rocky terrain of the Red Planet.
UNSPECIFIED: In this concept illustration provided by NASA, NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter stands on the Red Planet's surface as NASA's Mars 2020 Perseverance rover (partially visible on the left) rolls away. NASA's Perseverance (Mars 2020) rover will store rock and soil samples in sealed tubes on the planet's surface for future missions to retrieve in the area known as Jezero crater on the planet Mars.
NASA's Ingenuity Mars Helicopter
Its latest feat shows that the chopper has already massively surpassed its initial supposed number of flights, which is only at five.
As per a news story by Space.com, the Mars chopper of NASA has successfully capped off its Flight 20, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory of the United States space agency announced.
The Ingenuity Mars helicopter was initially supposed to operate in the Red Planet only five times, but it has since received an extension grant, stretching it to more than a dozen, and now on its 20th flight.
It comes as the Mars chopper has aced its initial missions, thus proving itself to be granted an extension to operate in the rocky terrain of the Red Planet.
The Ingenuity helicopter is working side-by-side with NASA's Perseverance rover, exploring the surface of the Martian planet to help humankind further study Mars before its upcoming human landing mission.
NASA Ingenuity Mars Helicopter: Flight 20
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory of NASA in California proudly announced on its Twitter account on Feb. 26 that the "Flight 20" of the Ingenuity Mars chopper was a success.
The 20th flight of the Mars helicopter took 130.3 seconds, which covered up to 391 meters or 1,283 feet in total. On average, its speed for a second was at 9.8 mph.
According to a recent report by ScreenRant, the Mars helicopter has just recently concluded its 19th flight, defying odds in the Red Planet.
The successful flight of the small helicopter on Mars did not conclude without any challenges, reminding the folks at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory regarding the complex environment of the Red Planet.
The Jet Propulsion Laboratory said that the environment of the Martian planet is not only challenging, but it is highly unpredictable as well.
A full scale model of the experimental Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, which will be carried under the Mars 2020 Perseverance rover, is displayed at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) on February 16, 2021 in Pasadena, California. - The Mars exploration rover will search for signs of ancient microbial life and collect rock samples for future return to Earth to study the red planet's geology and climate, paving the way for human exploration.
In fact, the Mars chopper recently faced a dust storm in the rocky and sandy terrain of the planet.
After the Mars dust storm, the cameras of the Ingenuity helicopter got filled with dust, making its lenses blurry. As a solution, NASA made some software changes to mask out the blurry parts of the images.
On top of that, the blades of the helicopter were also filled with dust, which got cleaned by performing a "servo wiggle."
Related Article: NASA: Ingenuity Mars Helicopter Flies For 23 Seconds in Latest Footage| Take a Look at Flight 15
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Written by Teejay Boris
