On Friday, NASA released footage of the Ingenuity Mars Helicopter showing its voyage across the Martian landscape.
The 161-second video was recorded during Ingenuity's 25th flight on April 8 when it flew 704 meters at up to 5.5 meters per second, as per The Register.
The vehicle climbs to 10 meters in the sped-up footage shown. It heads southwest and accelerates to max speed in under three seconds. Before landing on relatively flat terrain, it flies over Martian sand ripples and rock fields.
When the rotorcraft is within a meter of landing, the navigation camera turns off to keep dust off its navigation system.
How Ingenuity Works
According to The Register, the flights are designed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), which sends commands to the Perseverance Mars rover.
The Perseverance rover, in turn, relays them to Ingenuity. The Ingenuity uses onboard sensors to provide real time data to its navigation processor and main flight computer, allowing it to react in real time.
The Ingenuity became the first aircraft ever to make a powered, controlled flight on another planet on April 19, 2021.
Currently, it has 28 flights under its belt, which means it has completed three flights since the April 8 footage was recorded. However, it takes a longer time for videos to come back from Mars than images or other data.
The Ingenuity landed on the Jezero crater in 2021, which is some 314 million miles or 505 million kilometers away.
Perseverance can achieve transmission rates of up to 2Mb/s to its overhead orbiters. Then relay that data back to Earth at between 500Kb/s to around 3Mb/s, depending on the relative position between Mars and Earth.
Read Also: NASA Mars Rover Pictures: Perseverance Snaps Out-of-Place Photo of Drill Bit From 2021!
NASA Works on Re-establishing Connections Between Perseverance and Ingenuity
This month, NASA has been working on re-establishing connection between Perseverance and Ingenuity.
"Our top priority is to maintain communications with Ingenuity in the next few sols, but even then, we know that there will be significant challenges ahead," said Ingenuity team lead Teddy Tzanetos.
The two spacecraft lost communication over May 3-5 due to dust covering the helicopter's solar panels. This prevented the batteries from charging.
The field-programmable gate array (FPGA) that manages Ingenuity's operational state is then powered down, same with its heaters. When it came back online, its clocks had reset.
The clock resetting is not suitable for a number of reasons. One of the reasons is that the FPGA manages the heaters that protect the electronics from frigid Martian night temperatures.
In a status update posted on Friday, Tzanetos promised that Ingenuity's 29th flight may occur in the next few sols or Martian days, "assuming winter recommissioning activities complete nominally."
It is also remarkable for this helicopter to not only still be running, but to provide humans with the 161.3 seconds of footage, said Tzanetos. "After hundreds of sols and dozens of flights beyond the five flights originally planned, the solar-powered helicopter is in uncharted terrain. We are now operating far outside our original design limits," he added.
Related Article: NASA Rover's Search for Life on Mars Allegedly Lead to Discovery of Frog-Like Rocks on Red Planet?
