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NASA’s Ingenuity Mars Helicopter set a brand new report for the very best altitude it has flown at by flying 14 metres above the Martian floor on December 3, 2022. It has reached its earlier report altitude of 12 metres throughout three flights.
Ingenuity is a small solar-powered rotorcraft that landed on the Martian floor on February 18, 2021, together with the Perseverance rover. When it took off on the Martian floor for the primary time on April 19, 2022, it created historical past by conducting the primary powered flight on an extraterrestrial planet.
The December 3 flight was Ingenuity’s first one since a flight on November 22 and the second flight after a serious software program replace. Flight 34, which occurred on November 22, was unremarkable in most methods. In the course of the flight, Ingenuity flew about 5 metres within the air earlier than touchdown in the identical place.
Ingenuity’s software program replace
This made it shorter than Ingenuity’s first flight, throughout which the helicopter flew about 5 metres horizontally. However regardless of the straightforward nature of the flight, it introduced a serious milestone for the rotorcraft based on NASA. It was the primary one after a serious software program replace that gave Ingenuity two necessary new capabilities—hazard avoidance throughout touchdown and the usage of a digital elevation map to navigate.
Throughout earlier flights, NASA groups had to make sure that the Mars helicopter landed on “airfields” that have been freed from rocks or different obstacles. However this was proving tough within the Jezero Crater, which is a really rocky location. The brand new replace provides hazard avoidance that makes use of Ingenuity’s downward-pointed navigation digital camera to determine secure touchdown zones, permitting it to land in rockier terrain than earlier than.
An all-time excessive for the #MarsHelicopter!
Ingenuity accomplished Flight 35 over the weekend and set a brand new max altitude report, hitting 46 ft (14 meters) above the Martian floor. See extra stats within the flight log: https://t.co/7DMHj9LkNX pic.twitter.com/qAj5H9Z68C— NASA JPL (@NASAJPL) December 6, 2022
One other difficulty with Ingenuity’s navigation software program was the truth that it assumed the car was flying over flat terrain. Attributable to this flat-ground assumption, when the car is flying over hilly terrain, the navigation system thinks it’s veering in the direction of one facet. The navigation system would then truly veer the helicopter in the direction of the other way to counter this “error.”
Flight 34 served as a fundamental take a look at for Ingenuity’s efficiency with the brand new replace however Flight 35, which occurred on December 3, will present extra information about its capabilities after the replace.
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