July has been a month of smash new records for NASA ’s Ingenuity . The Mars Helicopter is excelling in its new mission ofassisting Perseverancein its scientific employment and the squad has been flying it farther , quicker , for longer , and higher than ever before .
With its 10th flight onJuly 24 , it has taken to the melody twice as many time as it was originally planned to – a true testament tohow talented the teambehind this pioneer flying vehicle is . trajectory 9 , on July 5 , design to cumulate some airy mental imagery for the Perseverance team , had the whirlybird flying the farthest and fastest yet . It moved over a distance of 625 meters ( 2,051 feet ) at 5 meters per 2d ( 11 miles per minute ) for 2 minutes , 46 seconds .
On flight 10 , it soar upwards even high . For the first fourth dimension in its mission , Ingenuity pass on an altitude of 12 meters ( 40 feet ) , and though its flying metre was similar to flight 9 it flew in a much more complex configuration with 10 distinct waypoints to fly through . Not bad for a fomite that was ask to crash by flight 4 or 5 while try out its limitations .
This trajectory had Ingenuity passing its first milepost on Mars , literally . Its combined flights now total over 1.6 kilometer ( 1 international mile ) length flown , with flight 10 adding a few hundred meters under its knock . The target for this expedition was to do some aerial scouting of an area called the " Raised Ridges . " This is an area that the Perseverance science squad is also intrigued by and hopes to visit these geographic features with the rover at some point in the future .
ingeniousness will keep to assist Perseverance for as long as it can . The team is not sure how long this will be given it was not designed to last this long , so each flight is used to get the maximum out of it . As the first take flight vehicle on Mars , it was a complete unknown region but it has secured its place in history as one of the most successful experiment ever on the Red Planet .
