Skip to main content

NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter nails seventh flight on Mars

NASA’s Mars helicopter, Ingenuity, recently completed its seventh successful flight on the faraway planet.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) announced the news on Tuesday, June 8, though didn’t immediately say when the flight took place.

Recommended Videos

“Another successful flight,” JPL said in a tweet, adding, “Mars helicopter completed its seventh flight and second within its operations demo phase. It flew for 62.8 seconds and traveled ~106 meters south to a new landing spot. Ingenuity also took this black-and-white navigation photo during flight.”

Another successful flight 👏#MarsHelicopter completed its 7th flight and second within its operations demo phase. It flew for 62.8 seconds and traveled ~106 meters south to a new landing spot. Ingenuity also took this black-and-white navigation photo during flight. pic.twitter.com/amluVq9wbb

— NASA JPL (@NASAJPL) June 8, 2021

More details about the specific nature of the flight will likely be revealed soon. However, the information released in the tweet confirms that Ingenuity’s latest flight wasn’t its longest in terms of either time or distance. The helicopter’s sixth flight, on May 22, for example, lasted 140 seconds, while its fourth flight, on April 30, saw the flying machine cover a distance of 266 meters.

According to a flight preview released by JPL last week, Ingenuity will have landed in a different spot from where it took off, marking only the second time for it not to return to its original launch location.

The team used data captured by NASA’s HiRISE (High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment) satellite camera on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter to scan the landing area to ensure it was relatively flat and free of any potentially troublesome obstacles.

The successful flight comes a couple of weeks after Ingenuity experienced its most precarious trip to date when a malfunction caused the aircraft to wobble uncontrollably in the air. The team traced the error to an issue with Ingenuity’s motion and stability smarts.

JPL is yet to confirm that it has successfully fixed the issue, though the fact that it makes no mention of any flight anomaly in its initial — albeit brief — report of Ingenuity’s seventh flight suggests the problem has been successfully resolved.

Ingenuity made history in April when it became the first aircraft to make controlled, powered flight on another planet — no mean feat considering Mars’ ultrathin atmosphere that makes flight more challenging.

JPL is now testing Ingenuity with different flight scenarios while also using its onboard camera to see how the aircraft, or a more advanced version of it, can assist future missions to Mars and other planets.

Trevor Mogg
Contributing Editor
Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…
NASA orbiter captures one last image of retired InSight lander on Mars
This illustration shows NASA's InSight spacecraft with its instruments deployed on the Martian surface.

NASA's Insight lander spent four years on the surface of Mars, uncovering secrets of the planet's interior, but it eventually succumbed to the most martian of environmental threats: dust. Mars has periodic dust storms that can whip up into huge global events, lifting dust up into the air and then dumping it on everything in sight -- including solar panels. After years of accumulation, eventually the dust was so thick that Insight's solar panels could no longer generate enough power to keep it operational, and the mission officially came to an end in December 2022.

That wasn't quite the end of the story for InSight, though, as it is still being used for science to this day, albeit indirectly. Recently, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) caught a glimpse of InSight from orbit, capturing the lander's dusty surroundings and showing how even more dust had built up on it.

Read more
NASA’s Mars rover just emerged from Jezero Crater. So, what next?
Perseverance's view from the rim of Mars' Jezero Crater

NASA personnel are celebrating the news that its Perseverance rover has finally reached the top of the Mars’ Jezero Crater rim after a challenging climb that took three-and-a-half months to complete.

The six-wheeled rover ascended 1,640 feet (500 meters) and made stops along the way to conduct various science observations as it continues its search for signs of ancient microbial life on the red planet.

Read more
NASA learns how the Ingenuity helicopter ended up crashing on Mars
NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter, right, stands near the apex of a sand ripple in an image taken by Perseverance on Feb. 24, 2024, about five weeks after the rotorcraft’s final flight. Part of one of Ingenuity’s rotor blades lies on the surface about 49 feet (15 meters) west of helicopter (at left in image).

Earlier this year, the NASA helicopter Ingenuity came to the end of its mission after an incredible 72 flights on Mars. The helicopter flew a remarkable 30 times farther than planned, and was the first rotocopter to fly on another planet, proving that exploring distant worlds from the air is possible. Now, NASA has revealed new details about what exactly caused the crash that brought the mission to an end, and what it learned about flying helicopters for future missions.

The final flight of Ingenuity took place on January 18, 2024, when the helicopter rose briefly into the air in a maneuver called a hop. The helicopter was fitted with a number of cameras, and shadows cast onto the planet's surface revealed that one of the helicopter's rotor blades was missing, having apparently separated at the mast. But it wasn't certain what had caused this damage.

Read more