Ingenuity Mars helicopter completes its seventh flight

NASA JPL is celebrating the worthwhile completion of one more flight for the Ingenuity Mars helicopter. The tweet announced that the seventh flight had been completed total, which will be the 2d flight for operations for the duration of the demo fragment for the helicopter. All over its seventh flight, the helicopter flew for 62.8 seconds and traveled roughly 106 meters south.

Ingenuity assign down successfully in a unique touchdown diagram for the duration of the flight and took the dim and white navigation photo seen above for the duration of the flight. NASA JPL did give out moderately extra aspect in the tweet in response to somebody who requested how many extra flights will be planned and if there were any indicators of assign on on the helicopter to this level. A JPL group member acknowledged that there were no indicators of aging but on the actuator system of the Ingenuity helicopter.

The group member says with every flight, extra precise-world info on the performance of the rotor and its thermal traits is gained permitting the group to develop allowable flight cases incrementally. Happily, there were no anomalies renowned for the duration of the flight.

The Mars helicopter suffered an anomaly for the duration of its sixth flight that made it unstable, nevertheless it completely landed safely. All over that six flight, the helicopter began to tilt towards the end of the mission. The plane made it about 150 meters into the flight sooner than the oscillating pattern started.

NASA acknowledged the oscillation became once brought about when a single frame from the navigation digicam became once lost, main to every affirm taken after that lost frame having an unsuitable timestamp. An unsuitable timestamp supposed the navigation algorithm became once the spend of images that didn’t precisely affirm its situation ensuing in the flight anomaly.