Skip to main content

NASA’s Ingenuity helicopter has now flown a mile across Mars

NASA’s impressive Mars helicopter has now clocked up a mile of flight across 10 separate missions. Ingenuity reached the milestone during its latest flight on Saturday, July 24.

The space agency’s team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which is overseeing the current Mars mission, said Ingenuity’s 10th and most recent flight was the most challenging yet.

Just over two months after a successful maiden flight over the Martian surface that saw it become the first aircraft to perform powered flight on another planet, Ingenuity’s latest trip saw it climb 12 meters (39 feet) above the ground — two meters higher than the aircraft’s previous altitude record.

The flight plan for Ingenuity's next Martian adventure.
The flight plan for Ingenuity’s 10th Mars flight, including the 10 waypoints. NASA/JPL-Caltech/University of Arizona

Saturday’s mission also saw the 4-pound, 19-inch-high aircraft fly between 10 waypoints for around 165 seconds — about the same length of time as Flight 9, which is its longest to date.

Flight 10 targeted an area called the Raised Ridges, named for its geographic features, JPL’s Teddy Tzanetos explained in a post.

The helicopter flew to different waypoints and used an onboard camera to capture the same part of the Raised Ridges from two different angles. The JPL team plans to combine data from the two images to generate a single stereo image.

Ingenuity also took images from other waypoints in the flight, again capturing the same spot from two different angles for the creation of more stereo images. The team will then examine the images to determine if the area warrants further exploration using the Perseverance rover, which is also part of the current Mars mission.

This is exactly the kind of work for which Ingenuity was designed, in other words, exploring a location from just above the ground to help scientists decide whether it’s worth sending along a ground rover to conduct more thorough research. Data from Ingenuity’s onboard cameras can also help NASA to map a safe, obstacle-free route for the rover when it’s directed toward a new location.

At the end of Flight 10, the aircraft turned northeast and touched down on its seventh airfield, around 95 meters (310 feet) west of Airfield 6.

Offering an overview of Ingenuity’s work to date, Tzanetos said the flying machine has now experienced 107 sols (Martian days) since deployment from Perseverance, “76 sols beyond the original technology demonstration mission it was designed for.”

The helicopter has also successfully dealt with two software updates to solve a flight issue and allow it to capture color imagery and has so far taken 43 13-megapixel images.

Reaching a total of one mile of flight across 10 separate trips is another success, with the team’s expectations at the start of this groundbreaking mission now easily surpassed.

Editors' Recommendations

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’s Mars rover marvels at ‘big chunky weirdo’
The Perseverance Mars rover took this selfie on Sept. 10, 2021 — sol 198 of the mission – in Jezero Crater after coring into a rock called ‘Rochette.’ Rock core samples from the floor of the crater will be brought back to Earth and analyzed to characterize the planet’s geology and past climate.

NASA’s Perseverance rover has been busy exploring Mars since landing there in spectacular fashion in February 2021.

The car-sized vehicle is equipped with a bunch of science tools and cameras to help it in its quest to find evidence of ancient microbial life on the distant planet. It’s also gathering together samples of Martian rock and soil for return to Earth in the ambitious Mars Sample Return mission. Additionally, the current mission offers an opportunity to test robotic technology that could be further developed for the first crewed mission to Mars.

Read more
Perseverance rover finds organic molecules in Mars’ Jezero Crater
mars 2020 perseverance rover

One of the biggest aims of Mars research right now is trying to figure out if life ever existed on Mars. Given how dry and inhospitable Mars is today, scientists are pretty certain that there's nothing living there currently. But millions of years ago, Mars could have looked a lot more like Earth, with plentiful surface water in rivers and lakes. Now, research focuses on using the instruments on rovers like the Perseverance and Curiosity rovers to try and look for evidence of ancient life on the planet.

Recently, researchers used data from Perseverance's SHERLOC instrument, a camera and spectrometer used to detect minerals and organic molecules, to confirm the discovery of a variety of organic molecules in Mars' Jezero Crater. Similar findings have been made by the Curiosity Rover in the Gale Crater, but these are some of the first indications of the finding in this other location.

Read more
NASA restores contact with Mars helicopter after nine weeks of silence
Mars helicopter

The last time NASA had contact with Ingenuity, the Mars helicopter was flying in the air on April 26.

Ten weeks on, the Mars team at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California has announced that it’s restored contact with the aircraft, and everything appears to be in order.

Read more